Explores the crucial role of rhetoric and oratory in creating and propagating a “Lost Cause” public memory of the American SouthEnduring Legacy explores the vital place of ceremonial oratory in the oral tradition in the South and analyses how rituals such as Confederate Memorial Day, Confederate veteran reunions, and dedication of Confederate monuments have contributed to creating and sustaining a Lost Cause paradigm for Southern identity. Towns s...

Discover the coolest robots of today and tomorrow in this colorful, photo-packed book. In this inviting and entertaining format, kids will learn about the science behind these amazing machines. Written in an easy-to-grasp style to encourage the scientists of tomorrow!

The American Civil War shaped the course of the country's history and its national identity. This is no less true for the state of Arkansas. Throughout the Natural State, people have paid homage and remembrance to those who fought and what was fought for in memorial celebrations and rituals. The memory of the war has been kept alive by reunions and preservationists, continuing to shape the way the War Between the States affects Arkansas and its people. Historian W. Stuart Towns expertly te...

In this major new history of the Civil War, Bruce Levine tells the riveting story of how that conflict upended the economic, political, and social life of the old South, utterly destroying the Confederacy and the society it represented and defended. Told through the words of the people who lived it, The Fall of the House of Dixie illuminates the way a war undertaken to preserve the status quo became a second American Revolution whose impact on the country was as strong and lasting...

This innovative blend of biography and history “lets readers browse through a Civil War’s worth of presidential decisions” (Booklist).In this book, journalist Stephen A. Wynalda has constructed a detailed breakdown of president Abraham Lincoln’s decisions in office, in day-by-day chronological order—including his signing of the Homestead Act on May 20, 1862; his signing of the legislation enacting the first federal income tax on August 5, 1861; and more pe...

In this spellbinding new history, David Goldfield offers the firstmajor new interpretation of the Civil War era since James M. McPherson'sBattle Cry of Freedom. Where past scholars have limned the waras a triumph of freedom, Goldfield sees it as America's greatestfailure: the result of a breakdown caused by the infusion of evangelicalreligion into the public sphere. As the Second GreatAwakening surgedthrough America, political questions be...

One hundred and fifty years after the first shots were fired on Fort Sumter, the Civil War still captures the American imagination, and its reverberations can still be felt throughout America's social and political landscape. Louis P. Masur's The Civil War: A Concise History offers a masterful and eminently readable overview of the war's multiple causes and catastrophic effects. Masur begins by examining the complex origins of the war, focusing on the pulsating tensions over state...

The Civil War is the greatest trauma ever experienced by the American nation, a four-year paroxysm of violence that left in its wake more than 600,000 dead, more than 2 million refugees, and the destruction (in modern dollars) of more than $700 billion in property. The war also sparked some of the most heroic moments in American history and enshrined a galaxy of American heroes. Above all, it permanently ended the practice of slavery and proved, in an age of resurgent monarchies, that a li...

"From the death of John Quincy Adams through the Civil War to the tragedy of Reconstruction, Wineapple tells the American story brilliantly." —Jon Meacham, Pulitzer Prize–winning authorA New York Times Notable Book of 2013A Kirkus Best Book of 2013A Bookpage Best Book of 2013Dazzling in scope, Ecstatic Nation illuminates one of the most dramatic and momentous ...

William C. Davis, one of America's best Civil War historians, here offers a definitive portrait of the Confederacy unlike any that has come before. Drawing on decades of writing and research among an unprecedented number of archives, Look Away! tells the story of the Confederate States of America not simply as a military saga (although it is that), but rather as a full portrait of a society and incipient nation. The first history of the Confederacy in decades, the culmination of a...

An authoritative new examination of John Brown and his deep impact on American history.Bancroft Prize-winning cultural historian David S. Reynolds presents an informative and richly considered new exploration of the paradox of a man steeped in the Bible but more than willing to kill for his abolitionist cause. Reynolds locates Brown within the currents of nineteenth-century life and compares him to modern terrorists, civil-rights activists, and freedom fighters. Ultimately, he finds neithe...

More than 140 years ago, Mark Twain observed that the Civil War had "uprooted institutions that were centuries old, changed the politics of a people, transformed the social life of half the country, and wrought so profoundly upon the entire national character that the influence cannot be measured short of two or three generations." In fact, five generations have passed, and Americans are still trying to measure the influence of the immense fratricidal conflict that nearly tore the nation a...