In Disunion, Edward L. Widmer, George Kalogerakis, and Clay Risen bring together the best essays of the celebrated New York Times blog to offer a unique and unforgettable history of The Civil War, from Fort Sumter to Appomattox. Celebrated upon publication for their startling originality, their uncanny ability to bring immediacy and to inspire fresh thought, the pieces were an integral part of the sesquicentennial celebrations, and indeed came to define them. Susan Schulten's "Visualizing History " offers but one example. In 1860, the United States government took its final count of the country's slave population. When the Coast Survey produced maps from the data, Americans could at last visualize slavery's prevalence; degrees of shading indicated the number of slaves in a given county. Beaufort County was one of the darkest on the map-in this blackened zone of South Carolina, slaves comprised 82.8 percent of the populace. Lincoln became obsessed with the map and used it to trace his troops' movement-Francis Bicknell Carpenter even painted it in the corner of "President Lincoln Reading the Emancipation Proclamation to His Cabinet. Schulten's pieces and scores of others explore the Civil War by means of key contemporary sources. Moving both chronologically and thematically across all four years, the volume is a comprehensive and illuminating text for scholars and general readers alike. Major academic and popular voices come together in each chapter to discuss secession, slavery, battles, and domestic and global politics. The selections feature previously unheard voices-women, freed African Americans, and Native Americans-but also Lincoln, Grant, and Lee. In one volume, Disunion explores America's bloodiest conflict and brings home its legacies.

About the Author
Edward L. Widmer is director and librarian of the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University. George Kalogerakis is a deputy Op-Ed editor at The New York Times. Clay Risen is an editor at The New York Times and the author of A Nation on Fire: America in the Wake of the King Assassination.

Reviews
This is a clear, focused and thoughtfully executed volume ... Disunion pushes its readers to contest and challenge conventional understandings of the causes, course and consequences of the Civil War. It is an innovative and compelling volume with wide-reaching appeal to both academic and general audiences. * Kristen Brill, History *



Book Information
ISBN 9780190621834
Author Edward L. Widmer
Format Hardback
Page Count 392
Imprint Oxford University Press Inc
Publisher Oxford University Press Inc
Weight(grams) 930g
Dimensions(mm) 185mm * 254mm * 31mm