A Plutarchian Life of Brown and Lincoln

A Plutarchian Life of Brown and Lincoln

The Zealot and the Emancipator: John Brown, Abraham Lincoln, and the Struggle for American Freedom by H. W. Brands. Doubleday, 2020. Hardcover, 464 pages, $30. Reviewed by Carl Rollyson H. W. Brands has written perhaps his most fluent book, a constantly engaging study...
Narrating the Future

Narrating the Future

Looming Civil War: How Nineteenth-Century Americans Imagined the Future By Jason Phillips. Oxford University Press, 2018. Hardcover, 320 pages, $35. Reviewed by Carl Lawrence Paulus “What is past is prologue.” William Shakespeare’s line from The Tempest is inscribed...
What Hath Lepore Wrought

What Hath Lepore Wrought

These Truths: A History of the United States by Jill Lepore. W. W. Norton, 2018. Hardcover, 960 pages, $40. Part Two, The People (1800–1865) Reviewed by Daniel N. Gullotta Sweeping histories of the United States by a single scholar always worry me. This is not to say...
The Bloody (Congressional) Road to Disunion

The Bloody (Congressional) Road to Disunion

The Field of Blood: Violence in Congress and the Road to Civil War By Joanne B. Freeman. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2018. Hardcover, 480 pages, $28. Reviewed by John Bicknell One could make the case that Yale professor Joanne Freeman is obsessed with people getting...
Haiti’s Role in the American Civil War

Haiti’s Role in the American Civil War

The Slaveholding Crisis: Fear of Insurrection and the Coming of the Civil War by Carl Lawrence Paulus. LSU Press, 2017. Hardcover, 328 pages, $49. Reviewed by Kyle Sammin In the teaching of American history, the United States is often portrayed as going it alone....