Author:James M. McPherson
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for History
'Read it. It will open your eyes about race history in America. It will shock you for what it tells you about politics in America today.' Richard Ford
'A remarkably wide-ranging synthesis of the history of the 1850s and the Civil War ... that effectively integrates in one volume social, political and military events from the immediate aftermath of the Mexican War through the sectional strife of the 1850s, the secession movement, and the Civil War ... It is a masterful work' New York Review of Books
'Compellingly readable ... the best one-volume treatment of its subject I have ever come across. It may be the best ever published ... This is magic' The New York Times
This book covers one of the most turbulent periods of the USA's history, from the Mexican War in 1848 to the end of the Civil War in 1865. With a broad historical sweep, it traces the heightening sectional conflict of the 1850s: the growing estrangement of the South and its impassioned defence of slavery; the formation of the Republican Party in the North, with its increasing opposition to slavery; and the struggle over territorial expansion, with its accompanying social tensions and economic expansion. The whole panorama of the Civil War is captured in these pages, from the military campaign, which is described with vividness, immediacy, a grasp of strategy and logistics, and a keen awareness of the military leaders and the common soldiers involved, to its political and social aspects.
The definitive study, meticulous in its scholarship and compulsive in its readability
—— Financial TimesMcPherson is wonderfully lucid... Above all, everything is in a living relationship with everything else ... Omitting nothing important, whether military, political or economic, he yet manages to make everything he touches drive the narrative forward ... historical writing of the highest order
—— The New York TimesA distinguished contribution to American history ... He has succeeded brilliantly. He has written what will surely become the standard one-volume history of the great conflict which forged America as a united nation
—— IndependentAbsolutely brilliant ... McPherson has fresh approaches to the war's background, the four years of struggle and the aftermath
—— Washington Post Book WorldMcPherson wears with equal ease the hats of biographer, economist, sociologist and military historian .. Probably the best single-volume history of America's Civil War yet written
—— EconomistA starting point and an intellectual inspiration ... a classic of masterly historical writing.
—— James WalvinJames is not afraid to touch his pen with the flame of ardent personal feeling - a sense of justice, love of freedom, admiration for heroism, hatred for tyranny - and his detailed, richly documented and dramatically written book holds a deep and lasting interest.
—— New York TimesRevolutionarily, the book abandoned the old narrative of black victimhood in favour of accenting the agency of the formerly enslaved who, fuelled by a desire for liberty, fought to achieve autonomy.
—— Colin Grant , ProspectThe standard and the main text through which the Haitian revolution is studied ... a book I've read back to back many times ... An incredibly brilliant book, an undeniably magnificent contribution to scholarship.
—— Akala's Great ReadsReading and rereading The Black Jacobins, I am struck by its incredible wit and humanity, and James' determination to write a history of slavery in the Caribbean in which people of African descent appear as thinking, feeling human agents - in other words, as the protagonists of their own history and not background characters in an essentially European story.
—— Dr Liam J. Liburd, Assistant Professor of Black British History, Durham University
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