Member Review Recent Recommended Books on the Civil War and Post-War

Interesting list. It provokes the question, who won the post Civil War peace? The southern states won Jim Crow, an apartheid system. But the California big 4, Andrew Carnegie, and John D. Rockefeller one the peace, by one possible standard. Chicago seems to have won the post war growth contest. Missouri, freed from slavery, became another growth center. It attracted thousands of southerners taking a chance on a new start. Texas, after 1870, got its railroads, probably much sooner and much better than it would have as part of the Confederacy, had it survived.
And it European and Turkish history demonstrates, as bad as Jim Crow conditions were in some areas, the humanitarian disasters of the 20th century were largely avoided with respect to the freed people.
The US won. Based on the elimination of slavery, and the rapid capitalization of industry, the US became probably the most powerful nation in the world, for most of the 20th century. And southern states got to be part of that nation.
 
The book on Faulkner caught my eye. I have on my home bookshelf a book on a similar theme William Faulkner and Southern History by Joel Williamson. Originally published in 1993, it may be considered out of date now, but is full of interesting stuff. According to Williamson (and other literary historians), the character of Col. Sartoris is a fictionalization of Faulkner's own great-grandfather, William Falkner (1825-1889), who was a Col. in the Confederate army.
 
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The book on Faulkner caught my eye. I have on my home bookshelf a book on a similar theme William Faulkner and Southern History by Joel Williamson. Originally published in 1993, it may be considered out of date now, but is full of interesting stuff. According to Williamson (and other literary historians), the character of Col. Sartoris is a fictionalization of Faulkner's own grandfather, who was a Col. in the Confederate army.
I will have to check it our when I have time.
 
The book on Faulkner caught my eye. I have on my home bookshelf a book on a similar theme William Faulkner and Southern History by Joel Williamson. Originally published in 1993, it may be considered out of date now, but is full of interesting stuff. According to Williamson (and other literary historians), the character of Col. Sartoris is a fictionalization of Faulkner's own grandfather, who was a Col. in the Confederate army.
I will have to check it our when I have time.
I'd say so. Its a collection of Reconstruction era essays by all the supposed most knowledgeable on the subject in that State. I'll probably write a review when I get done.
the only overview of the period in Arkansas I read was Carl Moneyhon book. I also read a book on the Freedmen’s Bureau there and did a lot of digging through the Freedmen’s Bureau records online.
 
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