The New York Times: Disunion: Modern Scholars and Historians Revisit and Reconsider the Civil War from Fort Sumter to the Emancipation Proclamation

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Overview

A major new collection of modern commentary— from scholars, historians, and Civil War buffs—on the significant events of the Civil War, culled from The New York Times' popular Disunion on-line journal

Since its debut on November 6, 2010, Disunion, The New York Times' acclaimed journal about the Civil War, has published hundreds of original articles and won multiple awards, including "Best History Website" from the New Media Institute and the History News Network. Following the ...

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Overview

A major new collection of modern commentary— from scholars, historians, and Civil War buffs—on the significant events of the Civil War, culled from The New York Times' popular Disunion on-line journal

Since its debut on November 6, 2010, Disunion, The New York Times' acclaimed journal about the Civil War, has published hundreds of original articles and won multiple awards, including "Best History Website" from the New Media Institute and the History News Network. Following the chronology of the secession crisis and the Civil War, the contributors to Disunion, who include modern scholars, journalists, historians, and Civil War buffs, offer ongoing daily commentary and assessment of the Civil War as it unfolded.

Now, for the first time, this fascinating and historically significant commentary has been gathered together and organized in one volume. In The New York Times: Disunion, historian Ted Widmer, has selected more than 100 articles that cover events beginning with Lincoln's presidential victory through the Emancipation Proclamation. Topics include everything from Walt Whitman's wartime diary to the bloody guerrilla campaigns in Missouri and Kansas. Esteemed contributors include William Freehling, Adam Goodheart, and Edward Ayers, among others.

The book also compiles new essays that have not been published on the Disunion site by contributors and well-known historians such as David Blight, Gary Gallagher, and Drew Gilpin Faust. Topics include the perspective of African-American slaves and freed men on the war, the secession crisis in the Upper South, the war in the West (that is, past the Appalachians), the war in Texas, the international context, and Civil War–era cartography. Portraits, contemporary etchings, and detailed maps round out the book.

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Editorial Reviews

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Since its November 2010, the New York Times blog Disunion has been enhancing our sense of the Civil War and the myriad issues that swirled around it. It daily entries about topics ranging from the secession crisis to wartime cartography and Walt Whitman's Washington journal have opened or reopened windows into an critical era that all too few of us adequately understand. Historian Ted Widmer (Martin Van Buren; Young America) has selected more than 100 articles from this respected website for readers to peruse at their leisure. Editor's recommendation.

Kirkus Reviews
Widmer, a Brown University historian, is joined by New York Times op-ed staff editors Risen and Kalogerakis in the masterful compilation of more than 100 short essays based on the award-winning Times Disunion blog (begun in 2010), which chronologically traces and reconsiders the War between the States, an event he believes still remains "a ghostly presence in American life." The collection sequentially launches with the secession crisis and moves through the Emancipation Proclamation, and the offerings are wonderfully multifarious. History scholar Louis Masur's insightful essay factors Lincoln's presidential election into the fray as deftly as Susan Schulten ably explores the war from a geographical perspective. War historian Adam Goodheart's contributions are consistent standouts and include a rich sketch of Harriet Tubman and pensive words about slaves at Christmastime. William Freehling considers the secession's impact through Confederate Gen. George Wythe Randolph's eyes, journalist Cate Lineberry offers an outstanding profile of Confederate spy Rose Greenhow and a jarring piece on juvenile soldiers, and military historian C. Kay Larson provides an article on the oft-overlooked presence of female wartime volunteers. Uniform in tone and thought-provoking content, the articles are supplemented by actual diary entries, artifact images, letters, pertinent cartography, photographs and poetry. The mood of the era is captured best through Carole Emberton's harrowingly detailed commentary on the scourge of war-borne smallpox, Terry L. Jones' deliberation on black militiamen and Widmer's own examination of Lincoln's portraiture, carefully manipulated "to give the Union a face--his own." Each of the assembled scholars, historians, academics and journalists crafts unique insights and viewpoints and through their collective dialogue, artistically contemplates the heft and enduring relevance of the Civil War. American history meets the "snap, crackle and pop of lively online writing" in this outstanding serialization.
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Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9781579129286
  • Publisher: Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers, Inc.
  • Publication date: 5/14/2013
  • Pages: 464
  • Sales rank: 191,725
  • Product dimensions: 6.42 (w) x 9.04 (h) x 1.34 (d)

Meet the Author

Ted Widmer is a historian at Brown University, where he is Assistant to the President for Special Projects. He has served as a senior adviser to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Director and Librarian of the John Carter Brown Library, and Director of the C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience at Washington College. He has written or edited many works of history, including, most recently, Listening In: The Secret White House Recordings of John F. Kennedy.

Clay Risen is an op-ed staff editor at The New York Times and the author of A Nation on Fire: America in the Wake of the King Assassination.

George Kalogerakis has been a deputy op-ed editor at The New York Times since 2006. He is a co-author of Spy: The Funny Years.

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