Must-Read American Civil War Books for the History Buff

The remarkable and inspiring story of William Still, an unknown abolitionist who dedicated his life to managing a critical section of the Underground Railroad in Philadelphia, the free state directly north of the Mason-Dixon Line, helping hundreds of people escape from slavery.

This new collection of the seminal writings and speeches of a legendary writer, orator, and civil rights leader, offers a full course on the remarkable, diverse career of Frederick Douglass, letting us hear once more a necessary historical figure whose guiding voice is needed now as urgently as ever. Edited by renowned scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Pulitzer Prize-nominated historian John Stauffer, The Portable Frederick Douglass includes the full range of Douglass’s works.

A president who governed a divided country has much to teach us in a twenty-first-century moment of polarization and political crisis. Hated and hailed, excoriated and revered, Abraham Lincoln was at the pinnacle of American power when implacable secessionists gave no quarter in a clash of visions bound up with money, race, identity, and faith. In him, we can see the possibilities of the presidency as well as its limitations. Lincoln’s story illustrates the ways and means of politics in a democracy, the roots and durability of racism, and the capacity of conscience to shape events.

Written by the acclaimed Civil War historian Allen C. Guelzo, and read by Robertson Dean, comes a brilliant history of the climactic three-day battle of Gettysburg, which draws the listener into the heat, smoke, and grime of Gettysburg alongside the ordinary soldier, and depicts the combination of personalities and circumstances that produced the greatest battle of the Civil War, and one of the greatest in human history.

Steve Inskeep tells the riveting story of John and Jessie Frémont, the husband and wife team who in the 1800s were instrumental in the westward expansion of the United States, and thus became America’s first great political couple.

From acclaimed historian and bestselling author H. W. Brands, comes a page-turning account of the epic struggle over slavery as embodied by John Brown and Abraham Lincoln, two men moved to radically different acts to confront our nation’s gravest sin.

From one of the great historians of nineteenth-century America, a revelatory and enthralling new biography of Lincoln, many years in the making brings him to life within his turbulent age. Lincoln was shaped by his times, and also managed at his life’s fateful hour to shape them to an extent few could have foreseen. Ultimately, this is the great drama that astonishes us still, and that Abe brings to fresh and vivid life.

Spring 1862. The Confederate Army in the West teeters on the brink of collapse. But General Albert Sidney Johnston is preparing to launch an audacious surprise attack on Ulysses Grant’s encampment–a small settlement in southwestern Tennessee anchored by a humble church named Shiloh. Drawing on meticulous research, Jeff Shaara dramatizes the key decisions of the commanders on both sides of the conflict. With stunning immediacy, Shaara takes us inside the maelstrom of Shiloh as no novelist has before.

The abolition of slavery in the aftermath of the Civil War is a familiar story, as is the civil rights revolution that transformed the nation after World War II. But the century in between remains a mystery: if emancipation sparked “a new birth of freedom” in Lincoln’s America, why was it necessary to march in Martin Luther King, Jr.’s America? A profound new rendering of the struggle by African-Americans for equality after the Civil War and the violent counter-revolution that re-subjugated them, by the bestselling author Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning, bestselling author of The Warmth of Other Suns examines the unspoken caste system that has shaped America and shows how our lives today are still defined by a hierarchy of human divisions. Beautifully written, original, and revealing, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents is an eye-opening story of people and history, and a reexamination of what lies under the surface of ordinary lives and of American life today.

In this collection featuring the landmark essay “The Case for Reparations,” the National Book Award-winning author of Between the World and Me “reflects on race, Barack Obama’s presidency and its jarring aftermath” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review), including reflections on the Civil War.

From renowned journalist and master storyteller Roger Lowenstein, a revelatory financial investigation into how Lincoln and his administration used the funding of the Civil War as the catalyst to centralize the government and accomplish the most far-reaching reform in the country’s history.

Random House publisher Bennett Cerf commissioned southern novelist Shelby Foote to write a short, one-volume history of the American Civil War. Thirty years and a million and a half words later, Foote published the third and final volume of what has become the classic narrative of that epic war. Now, Foote’s three-volume masterpiece is published in a new box set with an introduction from Pulitzer Prize-winner Jon Meacham and includes essays by Michael Beschloss, Ken Burns, Annette Gordon-Reed, and others.

A renowned historian traces the life of a single object handed down through three generations of Black women to craft a “deeply layered and insightful” (The Washington Post) testament to people who are left out of the archives.

To most Americans, Abraham Lincoln is a monolithic figure, the Great Emancipator and Savior of the Union, beloved by all. In Gore Vidal’s Lincoln, we meet Lincoln the man and Lincoln the political animal, the president who entered a besieged capital where most of the population supported the South and where even those favoring the Union had serious doubts that the man from Illinois could save it. Far from steadfast in his abhorrence of slavery, Lincoln agonized over the best course of action and comes to his great decision only when all else seems to fail. Brilliantly conceived, and masterfully executed, Gore Vidal’s Lincoln allows the man to breathe again.

Civil War general William Tecumseh Sherman earned a place in history as “the first modern general,” yet behind his reputation as a fierce warrior was a sympathetic man of complex character. In this remarkable reassessment of Sherman’s life and career, Eisenhower takes readers from Sherman’s Ohio origins and his fledgling first stint in the Army to his years as a businessman in California and his hurried return to uniform at the outbreak of the war. From Bull Run through Sherman’s epic March to the Sea, Eisenhower offers up a fascinating narrative of a military genius whose influence helped preserve the Union.

Instant coffee was invented during the Civil War for use by Union troops, who hated it; holding races between lice was a popular pastime for both Johnny Reb and Billy Yank; 13% of the Confederate Army deserted during the conflict. These are three of the hundreds of bits of knowledge that Mike Wright makes available in his informative and entertaining What They Didn’t Teach You About the Civil War, which focuses on the lives and ways of ordinary soldiers and of those they left behind.

Acclaimed military historian Bevin Alexander offers a provocative analysis of Stonewall Jackson’s military genius and reveals how the Civil War might have ended differently if Jackson’s strategies had been adopted.

In this brilliantly written epic novel, Jeff Shaara traces the lives, passions, and careers of the great military leaders from the first gathering clouds of the Civil War including; Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, Winfield Scott Hancock, Joshua Chamberlain, and Robert E. Lee. Profound in its insights into the minds and hearts of those who fought in the war, Gods and Generals creates a vivid portrait of the soldiers, the battlefields, and the tumultuous times that forever shaped the nation.

The unflinching nineteenth-century autobiography that broke the silence on the psychosexual exploitation of Black women–with an introduction by Tiya Miles, author of All That She Carried and National Book Award finalist.

A Pulitzer Prize-winning war correspondent takes us on an explosive adventure into the soul of the unvanquished South, where Civil War reenactors, battlefield visitors, and fans of history resurrect the ghosts of the Lost Cause through ritual and remembrance. Written with Horwitz’s signature humor, history, and hard-nosed journalism, Confederates in the Attic brings alive old battlefields and the new “classrooms, courts, country bars,” where the past and the present collide, often in explosive ways.