West from Appomattox: The Reconstruction of America After the Civil War - Hardcover

Richardson, Heather Cox

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0300110529 ISBN 13: 9780300110524

Publisher: Yale University Press, 2007

Synopsis

The story of Reconstruction is not simply about the rebuilding of the South after the Civil War. Instead, the late nineteenth century defined modern America, as Southerners, Northerners, and Westerners gradually hammered out a national identity that united three regions into a country that could become a world power. Ultimately, the story of Reconstruction is about how a middle class formed in America and how its members defined what the nation would stand for, both at home and abroad, for the next century and beyond. A sweeping history of the United States from the era of Abraham Lincoln to the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, this engaging book stretches the boundaries of our understanding of Reconstruction. Historian Heather Cox Richardson ties the North and West into the post - Civil War story that usually focuses narrowly on the South, encompassing the significant people and events of this profoundly important era. By weaving together the experiences of real individuals - from a plantation mistress, a Native American warrior, a labour organizer to Andrew Carnegie, Julia Ward Howe, Booker T. Washington, and Sitting Bull - who lived during the decades following the Civil War and who left records in their own words, Richardson tells a story about the creation of modern America.

About this title

Review:

"This is political history writ large, complete with a cast of characters that reflects the diversity of the American population...Historians of Reconstruction and the Gilded Age cannot afford to it ognore this book or fail to wrestle with the artgument."--;i>The Journal of American History.--Brooks D, Simpson "The Journal of American History "

About the Author:

Heather Cox Richardson is associate professor of history at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and the author of The Death of Reconstruction: Race, Labor, and Politics in the Post - Civil War North.

About this edition

• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 0300110529
• ISBN 13: 9780300110524
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 416