The Fiery Trial by Eric Foner - Book Review

Eric Foner serves as the DeWitt Clinton Professor of History at Columbia University. Perhaps even more noteworthy, Foner is one of a handful of authors to have been the recipient of the Bancroft and Pulitzer Prizes in the same year.1 His latest book, The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery, gives a rare glimpse at Lincoln amidst the backdrop of slavery. Foner aims to elucidate the private Lincoln’s thoughts on slavery, from his numerous speeches and correspondence, and locate the Great Emancipator on the broad spectrum of antislavery thought. Over one hundred and fifty years after his death and the end of the American Civil War, many Americans are blinded by the near-deism and God-like elevation of Lincoln as the liberator of one eighth of the population in 1863. Although they will not gain an understanding of Lincoln the person, readers might be surprised to learn about the true aspects of Lincoln’s feelings on race and slavery, most especially his gradualistic emancipation policies, compensated emancipation, and colonization.In Lincoln’s evolving theories on slavery, Foner makes clear that he was always against the institution of slavery itself. “Lincoln criticized slavery as unwise and unjust” at a time when antislavery thought, and especially abolitionism, was unpopular in his part of the country.2 In fact, Foner correctly argues that Lincoln’s refusal to see the expansion of slavery in the Western United States led to the outbreak of the Civil War.3 However, Lincoln could hardly be called an abolitionist: for a major portion of his political career, Lincoln was against black suffrage. Despite Lincoln’s shortcomings as a true abolitionist, Foner gives credit to Lincoln’s evolving views on slavery and persistence that the institution must end.

With heavy influence from Henry Clay, his political idol, Lincoln was a proponent of gradual emancipation. Foner explains that “during his first two years of the Civil War, he would present for the approval of slaveholders a number of plans for gradual, compensated emancipation.” For Lincoln, gradual emancipation was also tied to apprenticeship. Foner contends that Lincoln held on to his ideas of gradual emancipation up until the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation, and even after January 1863, he would occasionally speak of gradual emancipation and apprenticeship to ambassadors and cabinet members.4The second major premise of Lincoln’s views on slavery is his plan of compensation to the slaveholders, with major focus on border states. Foner especially details Lincoln’s presidency in 1862 as sincere confirmation of the compensated emancipation plan. “Lincoln asked Congress to adopt a joint resolution pledging to provide financial compensation to any state that enacted a plan for the gradual abolishment of slavery.”5 Even though compensated emancipation had been successful elsewhere, Lincoln was unable to carry out his compensation plan.Again drawing from Henry Clay, Lincoln took up the plan of colonization. Foner contends that an early connection with colonization also helped to inspire an almost permanent advocacy of colonization. After representing the Anthony Bryant family in a legal case in 1847, the Bryant family eventually relocated to Liberia. 6 It was not until after the Emancipation Proclamation had been issued that Lincoln publicly abandoned his efforts to colonize ex-slaves in Africa or South America. 7 Foner paints Lincoln’s colonization efforts as the belief that remained unchanged until the end of the Civil War neared. With much naiveté, Lincoln had a firm belief that colonization was a viable solution once emancipation was granted.

Briefly, Foner’s point that Lincoln was racist, even mildly so, falls short of full proof. Foner indicates that Lincoln used the word “niger” and “darkie” in everyday language. However, this alone can not prove that Lincoln was racist.8 That type of terminology would have been standard speech in Lincoln’s time. Foner also states that Lincoln did not embrace racism but also did not condemn it either, a thought that can be made in reference to anything. It is simple to remain unconvinced that Lincoln was racist based on this point alone. Also, Lincoln’s treatment of his servant, William Johnson, cannot fail to be mentioned. Not only was this servant black, but Lincoln signed for several recommendations and paid for Johnson’s funeral expenses. Had Lincoln been severely racist, it is very hard to imagine he would have accorded Johnson these respectful measures. This is the only area Foner falls short in his biography of Lincoln’s views on slavery. In his Preface, Foner admits that The Fiery Trial would not be a biography of Lincoln, but without knowing the personal Lincoln it is hard to understand his slavery positions.
Like a wave extending from Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation and his Gettysburg Address, after Lincoln’s death so carried on the emancipationist vision of the Civil War as laid out in David Blight’s Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory. Blight argues that in the Gettysburg Address Lincoln “seemed to see fitfully that rebirth would be rooted in the challenge of human equality in a nation.”9 Memory of the Civil War would have been drastically different had Lincoln not been assassinated. As Andrew Johnson took over the Presidency and issued his own Reconstruction policies that were lenient to Southern former slaveholders, many Northerners and former slaves used the emancipationist memory as something that could have been. Pushed aside were Lincoln’s gradual emancipation and colonization efforts, and instead to be remembered was his greatest accomplishment: the Emancipation Proclamation. Emancipation would be Lincoln’s lasting legacy.

1 EricFoner.com. “Eric Foner.” accessed June 23, 2014, http://www.ericfoner.com/index.html. 
2 Foner, The Fiery Trial, 26.3 Ibid., 165.
4 Ibid., 258. 
5 Ibid., 195. 
6 Ibid., 47.
7 Ibid., 258. 
8 Ibid., 120.

9 Blight, Race and Reunion 13-14. 

Mothers of Invention: Women of the Slaveholding South in the American Civil War

Drawing on letters, diaries, and poetry from Southern women belonging to the elite class of slaveholders, Faust attempts to examine how these women were transformed during the Civil War. At the onset of war dainty ladies were happy to send the menfolk off to battle, little expecting four long years of war and personal hardship. As the war raged on, elite southern women were forced to take up the slack of their missing husbands, sons, and brothers. Women came to know a different social order, one without their husbands and sons, and for single ladies, an entire life without men. Faust pens the biography of high society Southern women during the Civil War years to give historians and readers an idea of the transformations their lives went through in just over four years.
 Anyone searching for understanding of what women in the slaveholding class of the South during the American Civil War experienced would find use of this book. While interesting, Mothers of Invention leaves the reader feeling that something important was missed in Faust’s portrait of Southern slaveholding women. As president of Harvard University, Gilpin Faust’s other books specializing in the Civil War South include James Henry Hammond and the Old South: A Design for Mastery and The Creation of Confederate Nationalism: Ideology and Identity in the Civil War South.1
 With men running off to fight, women wanted to feel useful and needed something to keep them busy. Faust points to the desire of many women to find productive use of their time. In a precursor to the Reconstruction years and memorializing Civil War soldiers and Southern history, most elite women felt that they could contribute to the war effort in some way. According to many, teaching was a natural fit. The Augusta Daily Constitutionalist boldly proclaimed that “Women are peculiarly fitted, naturally and morally, for teachers of the young.” Faust argues pressingly that the advent of female teachers spurred a movement for the reform and upgrading of women’s education. Although there were educated women in Southern aristocracy, it was noted that the education of women was not substantial enough, particularly if they were to educate men.2

In general, women’s entire lives were turned upside down when their men left to defend the South. From managing plantations and droves of slaves, to adjusting to life across the board without their partners, women at first looked at the change in their lives as badges of honor. With capital and investments to sustain upper-class families, Faust contends that the effects of the mass exodus of so many men was delayed and less direct.3 However, as the Civil War would eventually come to an end women were beyond ready for their men to return home. Faust notes from the diaries and letters of many Southern women the entreaties for the men to return. A Texan wrote her husband, “The truth is . . . you must come home.”4
Mothers of Invention fails to mention another group of “Women of the Slaveholding South in the American Civil War.”: the slave women themselves. Living right alongside white women during the Civil War were female slaves. The experiences of these slave women during this period would have changed greatly, just as significantly as those of the slaveholding women. Surely their ‘inventiveness’ would have been just as great as white women of the ruling class. Without the capital and investment Faust notes of white women, slave women and newly emancipated women would have faced even greater challenges. The mention of Lizzie Neblett and her repurchase of her own clothing from a slave does not begin to shed light on the changing lives of slave women.5

David W. Blight’s Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory provides readers with three leading memories of the Civil War. Significantly for Mothers of Invention is the reconciliationist vision that extolled the dedication of Union and Confederate soldiers without entertaining discourse on the causes and motives of the Civil War, largely promoted by women. With their self-aggrandizement during The War, women felt they could also contribute something after the Civil War. Women felt they had suffered right alongside their men, and knew acutely the heroism and bravery of their men. Women, especially the female group, United Daughters of the Confederacy, were adept at raising money to memorialize the men who had fought in the Civil War. Blight posits that the United Daughters of the Confederacy even tried to control historical interpretation of the Civil War by managing student textbooks. 6 “As guardians of piety, education, and culture,” women channelled their war experiences into Reconstruction activism.7
A transformation signifies something that was, but has now been changed. Mothers of Invention does not look back at the women and the Civil War years after time had passed. Did the feelings and experiences these women experience carry on throughout the years of reconstruction? What were the significant aspects of transformation after the war in their relationships with men? Did the women bring back their beloved fashions? Faust alludes to soldiers experiencing post-traumatic stress but for all the reader knows it was business as usual for the Southern women after the men returned. Reflections along this vein would have allowed the reader to make a better conclusion on the effect of the American Civil War on women of the upperclass South. 

1 Harvard University. “Catherine Drew Gilpin Faust.” accessed June 9, 2014, http://www.harvard.edu/ president/biography.
2 Faust, Mothers of Invention, 83-84. 
3 Ibid., 32.4 Ibid., 241.
5 Ibid., 222.6 Blight, Race and Reunion, 273. 
7 Ibid., 273.

James Henry Hammond and the Old South: A Design For Mastery - Book Review

Drew Gilpin Faust provides the definitive account of James Henry Hammond’s life. Instead of the subtitle A Design for Mastery, Gilpin Faust could have chosen Great Expectations. Hammond’s father had great expectations for him as a young boy, and Hammond had extreme great expectations for himself. Born into humble beginnings, Hammond would go on to marry well and become one of the wealthiest planters of the Old South in South Carolina. Hammond expected great things of himself and of his surroundings based on his ability to control them. Attempting to realize these great expectations, Hammond became a leading political leader of South Carolina as governor, and the United States as senator. Hammond’s father instilled in him at an early age that he would be ambitious and successful. To do so, Hammond would need to master every aspect of his life. But, Hammond’s inability to completely master himself and attain his lofty ambitions would eventually contribute to his death. As Hammond died, so did the Old South.
 Anyone searching for understanding of the rich planter class of the Old South would be fascinated with this book. Hammond’s attention to detail regarding his plantations and personal life gives clarity into the Old South period of American history. Gilpin Faust seamlessly guides the reader through Hammond’s life and career, leaving the reader to hate Hammond on one page, and cheer him on the next. As president of Harvard University, Gilpin Faust’s other books include Mothers of Invention: Women of the Slaveholding South in the American Civil War and The Creation of Confederate Nationalism: Ideology and Identity in the Civil War South.1

Gilpin Faust uses communication between Hammond and his children as primary evidence of his controlling nature. With his children dependent upon him for financial assistance, “Hammond employed his financial authority to reinforce his psychological dominance.”2 Hammond’s children were never able to feel like adults because of Hammond’s need to control. Gilpin Faust convincingly maintains that Hammond wanted his children to be dependent upon him, while at the same time attempting to make their own way.3 For instance, when Hammond reached his fifties, he was ready for his sons to take over the plantation. When the Civil War broke out and Hammond’s eldest son, Harry, enlisted for the Southern cause, Hammond complained at all the plantation work Harry would be neglecting.4 Hammond did not stop there. In a particularly memorable passage, Gilpin Faust transcribes a portion of a letter Hammond had written to his brother about controlling their own bowel movements.5 In Hammond’s world, every action, involuntary or not, could be controlled.
Gilpin Faust explains Hammond’s desire to master his surroundings using his own detailed plantation records. Hammond was a meticulous record keeper, especially when it came to his plantations. In his plantation journals, Hammond tracked crop output, crop experiments, slave efficiency, and agricultural economics. It is easy for the reader to comprehend Hammond’s attempts at mastery solely based on Gilpin Faust’s use of the Hammond plantation journals. The Appendix may also be referenced for better understanding of Hammond’s plantation records.

Minute record keeping alone would not satisfy Hammond in his quest for absolute dominance in all aspects of his plantation, he also needed control over the particulars of the lives of his slaves. Shortly after taking the reins of Silver Bluff plantation Hammond set about exerting his dominance over his slaves. In order to prevent religion from becoming a vehicle for slave revolt, Hammond ordered black religious meetings stopped. Gilpin Faust argues that part of Hammond’s plan of exerting omnipotence over his slaves was taking away their religious activities, but another part was showing his slaves that he was their benefactor. So while black religious meetings were stopped, Hammond allowed white clergy members to minister to the blacks, albeit in a very controlled environment.6
In all of his efforts of mastery, Gilpin Faust points to one area Hammond was unable to control: his own sexual desires. Hammond carried on a type of concubinage relationship with two of his slaves. He even admitted to fathering several children with these two women, who also happened to be mother and daughter.7 In typical Hammond fashion, when his wife, Catherine, found out about the affairs and demanded the two slaves sold, Hammond controlled the situation and would not allow their sale.8
! In another example of Hammond’s inability to control his sexual desires, Gilpin Faust describes the mishap with Hammond and his four teenage nieces, Harriet, Catherine, Anne and Caroline Hampton.9 While Hammond admitted the indiscretion, the

repercussions to his political career were severe, not to mention his exile from his extended Hampton family. Although Hammond did not live during the Reconstruction years after the Civil War, one of Blight’s categories of historical memory in Race and Reunion is still applicable to Hammond’s life: Hammond was a virulent white supremacist. With his desire to become a man of literature in the Old South, Hammond wrote proslavery tracts. Here, “Hammond would justify slavery in terms of a hierarchical ideology that called not only for the dominance of white over black but for the preeminence among whites of men of intellectual endowments like his own.”10 Not only did Hammond believe whites should dominate blacks, but that whites, especially whites in the Southern aristocracy class like himself, were superior to blacks. Hammond took this dominant mindset to Europe during a nearly two year respite trip. Accustomed to an army of slaves to attend to his every need, Hammond was impatient with European servants and the free-labor system. Events climaxed into Hammond assaulting a servant and spending a night in a Belgian jail, in the “midst of all the felons.”11James Henry Hammond and the Old South is a great biography of one of the Old South’s true sons. James Henry Hammond exemplifies everything about the elite Old South: wealthy, intelligent, white supremacist, and a slave owner. Gilpin Faust provides readers with a riveting first-hand account of not only the life of Hammond, but of the true picture of elite Southerners in the years leading up to the Civil War. 

1 Harvard University. “Catherine Drew Gilpin Faust.” accessed June 9, 2014, http://www.harvard.edu/ president/biography.
2 Gilpin Faust, James Henry Hammond, 320. 
3 Ibid., 325.4 Ibid., 367.5 Ibid., 376.
6 Ibid., 73-74. 
7 Ibid., 87.8 Ibid., 316.9 Ibid., 241.

10 Ibid., 279. 
11 Ibid., 199. 

History 5373 - Civil War and Reconstruction

History 5373 - Civil War and Reconstruction

Summer I - 2014

Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory, by David W. Blight

James Henry Hammond and the Old South: A Design for Mastery, by Drew Gilpin Faust

Mothers of Invention: Women of the Slaveholding South in the American Civil War, by Drew Gilpin Faust

The Fiery Trial, by Eric Foner

Blight, David W. Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory. Cambridge: Belknap Press, 2001.

Book Review

Before the American Civil War even ended people looked for meaning in the dead and the living. David W. Blight’s Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory provides readers with three leading memories of the Civil War: (1) the reconciliationist vision that extolled the dedication of Union and Confederate soldiers without entertaining discourse on the causes and motives of the Civil War, (2) the white supremacist vision that would minimize the role of race and slavery as a cause of the war and justification of the South’s social order before the war, and (3) the emancipationist remembrance that struggled to provide the rebirth of the nation with black citizenship and black equality. These three visions would propel Americans out of the Civil War and Reconstruction years to well into the nineteenth century. 

Blight relies heavily on poet Walt Whitman for the root of reconciliationist thought and ideology. Serving the wounded and dying of both armies, Whitman became the epitome of the sectional reconciler: understanding of soldiers’ death and their need to mourn, commemorate, and memorialize all the death on both sides.(1) In fact, Blight credits Whitman with building and illuminating “the literary avenue to reunion.”(2) After the Civil War many Americans wanted to forget the Civil War and its causes. Sectional reconciliation would allow both the North and South to come together and rebuild the nation. Just days after the surrender at Appomattox the first mutual ceremony involving a parade and the decoration of the graves of the dead with spring flowers took place. (3) What was known then as ‘Decoration Day,’ would later become known as Memorial Day, spread throughout the North and South as a way to mutually sympathize and respect the dead of both sides. (4) Veterans themselves also needed a way to recollect and reunite. With a wave of fraternalism, soldiers’ reunions became a way for veterans to reminisce and express their shared trauma. These aging veterans were able to reconcile themselves together through commemoration of a common valor shared in the Civil War. 

Even with themes of reconciliation abounding in American culture and literature, Blight maintains that the white supremacist vision of the Civil War and Reconstruction took the place of the reconcilationist vision, especially in the South. In the beginning, Southerners had begun to remember the Civil War as the Lost Cause. The Lost Cause was the voice of reconciliation, but equally demeaned blacks, and crushed black adult’s rights. (5) The three elements that maintained prominence in the Lost Cause were the movement’s effort to write and control history, its use of white supremacy, and the place of women in its development. (6) And so, what began as a white counterrevolution during Reconstruction became the genesis of the Ku Klux Klan in 1866. (7) The Lost Cause developed into the South’s narrative of racial victory. (8) Specifically using the literary works of Thomas Nelson Page, Blight proves his point about the white supremacist vision. Because of Page’s fiction that depicted the plantation legend and agrarian virtue, he became a literary superstar for the South.(9) Undoubtedly, one of the most racially biased figures Blight utilizes as an example of white supremacy and black hatred is Mildred Lewis Rutherford of Athens, Georgia. As historian general of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, Rutherford was able to collect a massive library of the racist underworld and Lost Cause ideology. With essays, photographs and postcards, Rutherford filled scrapbooks with examples of lynchings, ‘loyal’ ex-slaves and Klansmen. (10) The white supremacist vision took deep root in the South, eventually leading to the Jim Crow era of Southern society and becoming ground zero for the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. 

According to Blight, lingering in the background of both the reconciliationist and white supremacist visions stood the emancipationist remembrance of the Civil War and Reconstruction. Led by abolitionists like Frederick Douglass, the narrative of black Civil War memory was of a national rebirth and redefinition. (11) In a lengthy chapter, “Black Memory and Progress of the Race,” Blight cites Booker T. Washington as leading the rhetoric on the “progress of the race” and the race problem. (12) Washington’s “progress of the race” theory viewed the beginning of of Negro life in America as the end of slavery, along with blacks emerging from slavery as a Christian people. (13) Washington pushed an “accommodationism” society, where blacks should demonstrate gratitude for past lives laid down and sacrifices made. (14) Blight goes on to paint Washington as the ultimate apologizer for the black race, both for their color and inability to live up to standards set by whites. Emancipationism fused the rebirth and redefinition led by Douglass and the accommodationism vision led by Washington.

As the 50th anniversary of the Civil War loomed, Americans had seen economic and social change, along with sectional reconciliation. (15) At the supremely segregated reunion at Gettysburg in 1913, Blight points out that whites took the memory of the Civil War and Reconstruction from blacks, leaving blacks as outsiders looking in - a trend that would continue throughout the nineteenth century. (16)

Blight’s use of contemporary literature and resources is impressive; however, Race and Reunion is not easy to read, in part because of the frequent borrowing from other sources. Blight could have had a greater eye for detail, as in his frequent omission of a closing parenthesis. Even more detracting is the transposition of the abbreviation for the Son’s of Confederate Veterans as SVC instead of SCV. (17) Other than Presidential elections in the two decades following the Civil War does Blight reference the political climate. Perhaps anticipating such criticism, Blight points out in his prologue that he does put considerable attention on Reconstruction politics while leaving out “late-nineteenth-century presidential politics.” (18) This omission of nineteenth century political climate by Blight leaves much unsaid for the plight of African-Americans into the nineteenth century. 

As the Director of the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance and Abolition at Yale and Professor of History at Yale University, David W. Blight is a leading expert on the Civil War and Reconstruction era. Race and Reunion received many book awards, including the Bancroft Prize, the Abraham Lincoln Prize, and the Frederick Douglass Prize. (19)

¹ David W. Blight, Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory. (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 2001), 23. 

² Blight, Race and Reunion, 20. 

³ Blight, Race and Reunion, 65. 

⁴ Blight, Race and Reunion, 84. 

⁵ Blight, Race and Reunion, 272. 

⁶ Blight, Race and Reunion, 259. 

⁷ Blight, Race and Reunion, 112.

⁸ Blight, Race and Reunion, 291. 

⁹ Blight, Race and Reunion, 225. 

¹⁰ Blight, Race and Reunion, 289-290.

¹¹ Blight, Race and Reunion, 303. 

¹² Blight, Race and Reunion, 300. 

¹³ Blight, Race and Reunion, 320. 

¹⁴ Blight, Race and Reunion, 348. 

¹⁵ Blight, Race and Reunion, 359. 

¹⁶ Blight, Race and Reunion, 366. 

¹⁷ Blight, Race and Reunion, 272. 

¹⁸ Blight, Race and Reunion, 2. 

¹⁹ Yale University Department of History. “David Blight.” accessed May 19, 2014, history.yale.edu/people/david-blight.

List of Books Read for SHSU - Master of Arts in History

History 5097 - African-American Slavery - Spring 2014

The Slave Trade: The Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade: 1440-1870, by Hugh Thomas

The White Man's Burden: Historical Origins of Racism in the United States, by Winthrop D. Jordan

From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African Americans by John Hope Franklin and Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham

In Human Bondage: The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New World, by David Brion Davis

12 Years a Slave, by Solomon Northup

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, by Harriet Jacobs

The Oxford Frederick Douglass Reader, by William L. Andrews

History 5373 - Civil War and Reconstruction - Summer I 2014

Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory, by David W. Blight

James Henry Hammond and the Old South: A Design for Mastery, by Drew Gilpin Faust

Mothers of Invention: Women of the Slaveholding South in the American Civil War, by Drew Gilpin Faust

The Fiery Trial, by Eric Foner

History 5384 - Texas History - Fall 2014

Babe: The Life and Legend of Babe Didrikson Zaharias, by Susan E. Cayleff

The Raven, by Marquis James

Tomlinson Hill: The Remarkable Story of Two Families Who Share the Tomlinson Name - One White, One Black, by Chris Tomlinson

Texas Tough: The Rise of America's Prison Empire, by Robert Perkinson

History 5372 - Early National America - Spring 2015

Forced Founders, by Woody Holton

Affairs of Honor, by Joanne Freeman

The Hemingses of Monticello, by Annette Gordon-Freeman

Parlor Politics, by Catherine Allgor

American Lion, by Jon Meacham

God's Strange Work, by David L. Rowe

Trail of Tears, by John Ehle

Soul by Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market, by Walter Johnson

History 5374 - Seminar in the History of the American South - Summer I 2015

The Mind of the South, by W. J. Cash

The Strange Career of Jim Crow, by C. Vann Woodward

American Slavery, American Freedom, by Edmund S. Morgan

A Stone of Hope: Prophetic Religion and the Death of Jim Crow, by David L. Chappell

History 5384 - Early Modern Europe - Summer II 2015

Carl L. Becker, The Heavenly City of the Eighteenth-Century Philosophers (1932), pp. 1-31
Paul Hazard, The European Mind [1680-1715] (orig. 1935), pp. xv-xx, 3-79.

History 5336 - Topics in History of Pre-Modern Europe Fall 2015

Mohammed and Charlemagne, by Henri Perinne

The Making of Europe: An Introduction to the history of European unity, by Christopher Dawson

Medieval Technology and Social Change, by Lynn White, Jr.

Plague and the End of Antiquity, edited by Lester K. Little

Living with the Dead in the Middle Ages, by Patrick J. Geary

Charlemagne: The Formation of a European Identity, by Rosamond McKitterick

The Inheritance of Rome: Illuminating the Dark Ages 400-1000, by Chris Wickham

The Rise of Western Christendom: Triumph and Diversity, A.D. 200-1000, by Peter Brown

History 5097 - Urban and Suburban History - Spring 2016

Rebels Rising: Cities and the American Revolution, by Benjamin L. Carp

The Park & the People: A History of Central Park, by Roy Rosenzweig & Elizabeth Blackmar

Unbound Feet: A Social History of Chinese Women in San Francisco by Judy Yung

Crabgrass Frontier, by Kenneth Jackson

The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit by Thomas J. Surgrue

Saving the Neighborhood: Racially Restrictive Covenants, Law, and Social Norms, by Richard R. W. Brooks & Carol M. Rose

The Shifting Grounds of Race: Black and Japanese Americans in the Making of Multiethnic Los Angeles, by Scott Kurashige

Smeltertown: Making and Remembering a Southwest Border Community, by Monica Perales

History 5377 - The American West - Summer 2016

The White Scourge: Mexicans, Blacks, and Poor Whites in Texas Cotton Culture by Neil Foley

Migra!: A History of the U.S. Border Patrol by Kelly Lytle Hernandez

The Los Angeles Plaza: Sacred and Contested Space by William David Estrada

Contagious Divides: Epidemics and Race in San Francisco's Chinatown by Nayan Shah

History 5385: A Seminar on the History of Latin American Commodities - Fall 2016

Sacred Gifts, Profane Pleasures: A History of Tobacco and Chocolate in the Atlantic World, by Marcy Norton

Mercury, Mining, and Empire: The Human and Ecological Cost of Colonial Silver Mining in the Andes, by Nicholas A. Robins

Banana Cultures: Agriculture, Consumption, and Environmental Change in Honduras and the United States, by John Soluri

Andean Cocaine: The Making of a Global Drug, by Paul Gootenberg

Jungle Laboratories: Mexican Peasants, National Projects, and the Making of The Pill, by Gabriela Soto Laveaga

History 5389.01 Great Britain and the British Empire - Spring 2017

Ornamentalism: How the British Saw Their Empire, by David Cannadine

Colonialism and Its Forms of Knowledge, by Bernard Cohn

The Scandal of Empire: India and the Creation of Imperial Britain, by Nicholas Dirks

Ideologies of the Raj, by Thomas Metcalf

Making Empire: Colonial Encounters and the Creation of imperial Rule in Nineteenth-Century Africa, by Richard Price

English lessons: The Pedagogy of Imperialism in Nineteenth-Century China, by James Hevia

Spies in Arabia: The Great War and the Foundations of Britain's Covert Empire in the Middle East,  by Priya Satia

Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya, by Caroline Elkins

History 5098.03 Auschwitz - Summer I 2017

Auschwitz, by Deborah Dwork and Robert Jan van Pelt

Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp, by Yisrael Gutman and Michael Berenbaum

Commandant of Auschwitz, by Rudolf Hoess

The Auschwitz Volunteer: Beyond Bravery, by Witold Pilecki

Survival in Auschwitz, by Primo Levi