Here are 100 books that How the South Won the Civil War fans have personally recommended if you like
How the South Won the Civil War.
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By Laura Hooton, Paul Spickard, and Francisco BeltránAuthor
Why are we passionate about this?
Paul Spickard wrote the first edition of Almost All Aliens. He invited Francisco Beltrán and Laura Hooton, who worked under Dr. Spickard at UC Santa Barbara, to co-author the second edition after working as research assistants and providing suggestions for the second edition. We are all historians of race, ethnicity, immigration, colonialism, and identity, and in our other works and teaching we each think about these topics in different ways. We did the same for this list—this is a list of five books that talk about topics that are important to Almost All Aliens and approaches that have been influential in how we think about the topic.
Kendi’s book is the most recent in a long line of fantastic scholars who have tackled discussions of racism in America, especially anti-Black racism. Kendi focuses specifically on racist ideas, and how those ideas were created and then used to rationalize policies and inequalities for generations. The book is a New York Times Bestseller for a reason: it is accessible, has important ideas that are well-supported, and the reader doesn’t get lost in a history that covers a wide span of time.
Stamped from the Beginning is a redefining history of anti-Black racist ideas that dramatically changes our understanding of the causes and extent of racist thinking itself.
** Winner of the US National Book Award**
Its deeply researched and fast-moving narrative chronicles the journey of racist ideas from fifteenth-century Europe to present-day America through the lives of five major intellectuals - Puritan minister Cotton Mather, President Thomas Jefferson, fiery abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, brilliant scholar W.E.B. Du Bois, and legendary anti-prison activist Angela Davis - showing how these ideas were developed, disseminated and eventually enshrined in American society.
In 1964, the FBI found smoldering remains of the station wagon that James Chaney, Michael Schwerner, and Andrew Goodman were driving before they disappeared at the hands of the Ku Klux Klan. Shortly after, Julie Kabat’s beloved brother Luke arrived in Mississippi as a volunteer to assist Black civil rights…
I believe in democracy. I think the US has the opportunity to be the world’s first multicultural and inclusive democracy. And I think that’s a very, very hard thing to do. I’ve been writing about democracy through the lens of presidential history my whole career, and I think the US has done some things so impressively well while at the same time it frustratingly keeps failing to live up to its own ideals. The tensions and contradictions in our history as we try to expand and enact those ideas are endlessly fascinating. And I’m nervous that we may be seeing the end of a national commitment to democracy.
I love this book because it’s political science at its best; it uses a lot of great data to study how history affects us in the present; it shows us how hard change is and also what makes it possible. It’s depressing and hopeful and super smart. It’s social science but it’s also very readable.
The lasting effects of slavery on contemporary political attitudes in the American South
Despite dramatic social transformations in the United States during the last 150 years, the South has remained staunchly conservative. Southerners are more likely to support Republican candidates, gun rights, and the death penalty, and southern whites harbor higher levels of racial resentment than whites in other parts of the country. Why haven't these sentiments evolved? Deep Roots shows that the entrenched views of white southerners are a direct consequence of the region's slaveholding history. Today, southern whites who live in areas once reliant on slavery-compared to areas…
I believe in democracy. I think the US has the opportunity to be the world’s first multicultural and inclusive democracy. And I think that’s a very, very hard thing to do. I’ve been writing about democracy through the lens of presidential history my whole career, and I think the US has done some things so impressively well while at the same time it frustratingly keeps failing to live up to its own ideals. The tensions and contradictions in our history as we try to expand and enact those ideas are endlessly fascinating. And I’m nervous that we may be seeing the end of a national commitment to democracy.
This is another readable book—and it’s really important because these authors don’t just focus on the norms that Trump violated and that get so much attention, but actually offer an interesting analysis of the things he did administratively that weakened the office of the presidency and the national government. People tend to think Trump was a poor administrator, and in many ways, of course, he was, but his actions have consequences that we don’t always see and this book tells us about them.
"This is a book for everyone who has developed an unexpected nostalgia for political 'norms' during the Trump years . . . Other books on the Trump White House expertly detail the mayhem inside; this book builds on those works to detail its consequences." ―Carlos Lozada (one of twelve books to read "to understand what's going on")
"Perhaps the most penetrating book to have been written about Trump in office." ―Lawrence Douglas, The Times Literary Supplement
The definitive account of how Donald Trump has wielded the powers of the American presidency
The extraordinary authority of the U.S. presidency has no…
How Contempt Destroys Democracy
by
Zachary Elwood,
After Trump's 2024 election, many liberal Americans have seen that previous ways of combatting Trump haven't worked—and that some approaches may have even created more support for Trump. If they want to be more effective in their activism, anti-Trump Americans must be willing to consider new ways of thinking about…
Michael Patrick Lynch is Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and Provost Professor of the Humanities at the University of Connecticut. His books have been translated into a dozen languages and include On Truth in Politics: Why Democracy Demands It, The Internet of Us, True to Life (Editor’s Choice, The New York Times Sunday Book Review), and Know-it-All Society (winner of the 2019 George Orwell Award). Lynch’s work has been profiled in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Nature, The Guardian, The Washington Post, and many other publications worldwide; his 2017 TED talk has been viewed nearly 2 million times. He lives in CT with his family and one very philosophical dog.
This book has become a touchstone in conversations about democratic erosion. What I found most compelling was how it uses global and historical patterns to explain how democracies can slide into authoritarianism—slowly, and often legally. It helped me connect institutional changes in the U.S. to larger global trends in democratic backsliding.
Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt argue that today’s democracies rarely collapse through sudden coups. Instead, they are gradually weakened from within by elected leaders who stretch or disregard institutional norms to expand their own power. These changes frequently occur under the appearance of legality, making democratic decay harder to detect.
Drawing on historical and global examples, the authors show how democracies slide into authoritarianism when two foundational norms begin to erode: mutual toleration (the recognition that political rivals are legitimate) and institutional forbearance (the practice of exercising restraint even when one holds legal authority). When those norms break down,…
'The most important book of the Trump era' The Economist
How does a democracy die? What can we do to save our own? What lessons does history teach us?
In the 21st century democracy is threatened like never before.
Drawing insightful lessons from across history - from Pinochet's murderous Chilean regime to Erdogan's quiet dismantling in Turkey - Levitsky and Ziblatt explain why democracies fail, how leaders like Trump subvert them today and what each of us can do to protect our democratic rights.
'This book looks to history to provide a guide for defending democratic norms when they…
Keith Foskett has hiked around 15,000 miles on classic hiking trails including the Pacific Crest Trail, El Camino de Santiago, and the Appalachian Trail. He has written four books, and contributes to various outdoor publications. Having once been described as an anomaly (it was apparently a compliment), he now divides his time between walking, cycling, and delving into the merits of woollen underwear.
The first line of the description roused my curiosity with this one: "Richard Grant has never spent more than twenty-two consecutive nights under the same roof." Curious about his own wanderlust, and theorising that America is full of wanderers, he went out to prove it. Delving into the whys of nomads and travellers, I now understand my own nomadic tendencies.
Richard Grant has never spent more than 22 consecutive nights under the same roof. Motivated partly by his own wanderlust and partly by his realisation that America is a land populated by wanderers, he set out to test his theory and this book is the result. Grant follows the trails of the first European to wander across the American West (a failed conquistador); joins a group of rodeo-competing cowboys (and gets thrown by a mechanical bull); tells the story of the vanishing nomadic Indians and links up with 300,000 "gerito gypsies" - old people who live and travel in their…
I’ve been writing about my explorations in the wilderness for over 20 years starting with the first edition of my Tahoe Rim Trail guidebook. I’ve always been fascinated by writers who embark on solo journeys into nature, or just traveling in general, and in so doing discover themselves and what they really want from their lives. While I’ve read my share (and written a few) stories about super feats of human endurance, I find the most satisfaction from reading about ordinary people experiencing life at a scale that makes sense to all of us.
Published 50 years after Desert Solitaire, seventh-generation Utah resident Amy Irvine talks about her respect for Abbey’s impact on her life and writing, while also not holding back on lambasting Abbey for his behavior and hypocrisy. Irvine told Orion magazine, “My goal was not to take Abbey down, but rather to make space for other voices and relationships to the natural world.” While Abbey might be the context for the book, Irvine goes on to deliver a fascinating exploration into her own take on the wonders of wilderness. She can be as hard on herself as she is on Abbey. This book is a great contemporary look at a key question for those of us who explore the wilds: How do we keep from loving it to death?
"A grief–stricken, heart–hopeful, soul song to the American Desert."
—PAM HOUSTON, author of Deep Creek
As Ed Abbey’s Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness turns fifty, its iconic author, who has inspired generations of rebel–rousing advocacy on behalf of the American West, is due for a tribute as well as a talking to. In Desert Cabal: A New Season in the Wilderness, Amy Irvine admires the man who influenced her life and work while challenging all that is dated—offensive, even—between the covers of Abbey's environmental classic. Irvine names and questions the "lone male" narrative—white and privileged as it is—that…
I spent most of my life in the western United States. Born and raised in northern Idaho, a professorial position attracted me to Tucson, Arizona, the long-time home of Edward Abbey. Cactus Ed said it best: “The idea of wilderness needs no defense. It only needs more defenders. Remaining silent about the destruction of nature is an endorsement of that destruction.” Upon reading books by Abbey and others writing about the American West, I became a defender of the idea of wilderness.
Guthie’s autobiography describes the wild, western United States from his perspective as a 64-year-old westerner. Born in 1901, Guthrie provides a compelling account of the rugged beauty of the West. Guthrie’s writing is lucid and compelling. I had read most of his books by the time I turned 30.
"It was a fine country to grow up in. To find riches, a boy had only to go outside," writes A. B. Guthrie, Jr., aobut his childhood in Montana early in the twentieth century. This autobiography was originally published in 1965 when he was sixty-four and still had miles to go. It recounts lively adventures and reflects on a career that brought fame for The Big Sky (1947) and led to the Pulitzer Prize for The Way West (1949).
In an afterword David Petersen, who edited Big Sky, Fair Land: The Environmental Essays of A. B. Guthrie, Jr. (1988), describes…
Ever since I can remember, I've been captivated by the American West. Was it that cowboys were brave and if you had integrity it was most certainly put to the test? Was it that everyone rode horses and I was a horse crazy girl? Whatever it was that struck me, it stayed. I have treasured the West ever since, through books, film, art, and most recently, a fantasy western trilogy of my own.
I read this book for the first time when I was probably nine or ten and I think this was one of the books that really started it all. It put words to what I felt about the West...the glory of the wide plains, the kind of guts it took to survive, the love of a boy and a horse, and the lengths they would go for each other. It's a perfectly wistful and beautiful western.
My love for both the Weird and the Wild West started somewhere in the 90s. I watched many movies and adored playing Deadlands (TTRPG) with my friends. I picked this theme because most Western-themed books and movies were very male-orientated, yet I always found myself drawn to the heroines in these stories. While I loved characters like Billy the Kid and Wild Bill Hickok, I could better relate to Calamity Jayne or Belle Starr. During our Role Play game nights, I often played female gunslingers. That’s how I ended up creating Coyote, who inspired me to write her story in a series of novels.
“Margaret Parker and Hattie LaCour never intended to turn outlaw,” but sometimes life just hands you a rough deal. Especially if you are a woman in the Wild West. This novel is an interesting journey of strong women choosing to take fate into their own hands. They don’t want to end up on their backs to make money, and decide they rather take the money they feel the world owes them. Heresy is a classical Wild West tale with a bit of a female twist. A good read for any lover of this genre.
The Parker-LaCour Gang. The first and only all-female band of outlaws in the American West. Ignored during their time. Written out of history.
Margaret Parker and Hattie LaCour never intended to turn outlaw.
After being run off their ranch by a greedy cattleman, their family is left destitute. As women alone they have few choices: marriage, lying on their backs for money, or holding a gun. For Margaret and Hattie the choice is easy. With their small makeshift family, the gang pulls off a series of heists across the West.
Though the newspapers refuse to give the female gang credit,…
I recall the exact moment when my interest sparked about frontier prostitution and Denver’s underbelly — a friend mentioned the ‘bad blood’ in her family — an ancestor who was a second-rate madam and who employed her own daughters. The quest started. Who were these women, and why did they make the choices they did? I’ve spent years chasing down traces of the old west’s prostitutes, fascinated by their identities and lives. The west had opportunities for women who were willing to take chances. As a fifth-generation Coloradoan, I hoped to capture the story of these enterprising and overlooked women, their lives, and the world around them.
By now, readers can get a sense of where my recommendations are going with all of this. Life in the West was hard, and alcohol and drugs were turned to (often) to help reduce the pain, discomfort, and loneliness of living in the western United States. Whiskey tended to be of poor quality, drugs were not known to be addictive, and a lot of the stereotypical old west behavior stemmed from the use of liquor and drugs – often to the detriment of the users…and innocent bystanders.
This book explores the role and influence of drink and drugs (primarily opium) in the Old West, which for this book is considered to be America west of the Mississippi from the California gold rush of the 1840s to the closing of the Western Frontier in roughly 1900. This period was the first time in American history that heavy drinking and drug abuse became a major social concern.
Drinking was considered to be an accepted pursuit for men at the time. Smoking opium was considered to be deviant and associated with groups on the fringes of mainstream society, but opium…
