This Mighty Scourge: Perspectives on the Civil War - Hardcover

McPherson, James M.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0195313666 ISBN 13: 9780195313666

Publisher: OUP USA, 2007

Synopsis

In the same tradition as Lincoln and the Second American Revolution and Drawn with the Sword: Reflections on the Civil War, Pulitzer-prize winner James M. McPherson has gathered an illuminating collection of essays that reflect his latest thinking on the Civil War. Filled with new interpretations and fresh scholarship, these essays address many of the most enduring questions and provocative debates about the Civil War. In some, McPherson distills the wisdom of many years of teaching and writing about the meaning of the war and about slavery and its abolition. In others, he makes use of primary research that breaks new ground on such topics as Confederate military strategy, foreign views of the war, soldiers and the press, the failure of peace negotiations to end the war, and Southern efforts to shape a heroic memory of the war. The selection will include several never-before-published essays, including one on General Robert E. Lee's goals in the Gettysburg campaign, and another on Lincoln as Commander-in-Chief. The book also features a typescript of McPherson's 2000 National Endowment for the Humanities Jefferson Lecture about Lincoln's legacy that has never been published in its complete form. As a whole, these essays provide a rich interpretive history of the Civil War and its meaning for America ― indeed for the world.

About this title

Review:

At first glance another reshuffle of some of Professor McPherson's impressively vast back-catalogue, is on closer inspection a much more timely, far more valuable, and revealing collection of one man's 'perspectives on the Civil War'. (S.-M Grant, History)

This well-written collection by one of America's leading Civil War historians is very welcome not only to those interested in the conflict, but also for readers fascinated by nineteenth-century military history. (Jermey Black, History Today)

About the Author:

James M. McPherson is the George Henry Davis '86 Professor of History Emeritus at Princeton University. He has published numerous volumes on the Civil War, including Lincoln and the Second American Revolution, Drawn with the Sword: Reflections on the American Civil War, and For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War, which won the prestigious Lincoln Prize in 1998.

About this edition

• Publisher: OUP USA
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 0195313666
• ISBN 13: 9780195313666
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 272