100 Books Like The Civil War

This was the book, which truly drew me into the world of the Civil Rights struggle in America, a personalized account by Myrlie Ever’s of her life (and that of their children), with her civil rights worker husband and father, until his untimely assassination in 1963.

It is a very personal and moving account of their family life, their passion, and pursuit of the American Dream of equal rights for their family, set against the backdrop of a deeply segregated social order of their time in the Deep South. 

I found this book compelling, enlightening, and touching.

While this is a non-fiction book, with the story that unfolds, you could be forgiven for believing it’s a work of fiction. That a US president, would send tens of thousands of US Army personnel into a state to quell an insurrection in the 20th Century is barely believable, but this is indeed what happened.

The remarkable book sets out the events which surrounded the heated and impassioned debate which evolved around the admission of James Meredith into the University of Mississippi, known as Ole Miss. 

The facts alone make this a compelling read, written in a journalist styling, making the read fast-paced and highly informative.

Eyes on The Prize, sets out the main events and other occurrences across America, in the Civil Rights period from 1954 to 1965. While a companion book to the PBS documentary of the same name, the book serves as an introduction, intriguing read, and springboard for further research on specific events or areas of particular interest.

The time-lined events ‘roadmaps’ are particularly helpful at providing context for the events covered and demonstrate the evolving nature of each event explored. These along with segments of oral histories and interviews conducted for the documentary provide additional interest.

While many books are written after the event or events contained in the book, this book is contemporary to the events it relates to. In this case the birth and growth of the Citizens Councils in the Deep South in the mid-1950s. 

The author and then managing editor of the Greenville Democratic Times sets out, in a clear and readily understood way, the mood of the day among the white-collar political and business classes in the months and years immediately following the Brown v Board of Education decision.

It’s a worthy read and a touchstone of the rising political temperatures of those times.  

America Aflame demonstrates how people’s religious views impacted the extended length and divisiveness of the American Civil War. Both sides in the conflict thought God was on their side; they had to keep on fighting. And yet, some Northern Christians condemned slavery for its inhumanity, while some Southerners extolled slavery for its social benefits. In my historical fiction trilogy, I also show the tensions between war’s destructive methods and the religious beliefs of common citizens who refuse to fight. David Goldfield’s storytelling style of non-fiction writing captured my attention, whether describing the tone of this bold new country, or parsing the dueling natures of Abraham Lincoln and Robert E. Lee.

If you can read only one book on Lincoln, this is the one I would choose. In my opinion—as well as that of many professional historians—it is the best book ever written to examine why Lincoln waited two years after becoming president to issue the Emancipation Proclamation. In this brilliant and elegantly written book, a Pulitzer Prize historian argues, entirely convincingly, that the need to keep together his pro-union coalition required Lincon to proceed very cautiously.

To be sure, Foner writes that while Lincoln’s long-held anti-slavery convictions were not in doubt, he also initially shared the racist attitudes that black people were not ready for full freedom. However, Foner emphasizes that as Lincoln grew in office, his beliefs increasingly moved towards those of Frederick Douglass—whom Lincoln came to greatly admire—and other full-fledged abolitionists.

This book has captured my interest and my heart for a long time. You may wonder what a book about a great president is doing in a list of the best small “L” leadership books. Here is the reason: I get many powerful principles and practices of small “L” leadership–things I can use in my family, at church, and in my professional life–every time I read this book (and I have read it three times!).

It doesn’t hurt that the writing is beautiful! I love the writing, and I love to see how Lincoln created an effective team in his cabinet composed of all of his rivals for the presidential nomination with small and simple things. Amazing!

I can’t help but be struck by how Richardson brought together so many big topics so smoothly in one volume.

Usually, historians treat the stories of the post-war South, North, and West separately, but Richardson unites them by looking at how Civil War-era Americans thought about foundational ideas like work, freedom, and order.

Arguing that the whole country went through a broader, national reconstruction, Richardson follows ideas about “bad workers” and “special interests” from 1865 down to the early 20th century, using vignettes of interesting and important individuals to move the story along.  

Beautifully written masterwork on one of the most important wars of the 19th century. It takes the reader from the experience of ordinary soldiers in battle to key debates around the cabinet table, in a rare display of dexterity and understanding of all levels of war. You will enter Grant’s HQ from where he ran the critical Western theater of operations and sit across from Lincoln as he makes the key decision for a hard war that let the Union maximize its resources and win. And you will walk into Lee’s HQ where the Confederacy lost the war in bursts of Southern hubris that led to two ill-conceived invasions of the North that provoked the final crushing.  

David M. Potter’s The Impending Crisis, 1848-1861 (1976; winner of a posthumous Pulitzer Prize for History) remains, after nearly half-a-century, the best narrative on the coming of the Civil War. It brims with perceptive analysis and very usefully instructs readers about history’s vexing complications. Completed after Potter’s death by his colleague at Stanford Don E. Fehrenbacher, the engaging text forcefully reminds readers to keep in mind the contingent nature of politics and to avoid assuming events had to play out as they did. Part of the period’s complexity lay in the fact that although the crisis of 1860-1861 had everything to do with slavery’s powerful influence over American political affairs, the increasingly heated rhetoric of the secession winter did not focus on whether the nation would keep or jettison the institution. Four years of war answered that fundamental question.