David Blight
Books by David Blight
Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom
by David Blight
***Winner of the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for History***
In Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom historian David Blight, Sterling Professor of American History at Yale University, tells the life story of Frederick Douglass (1818-1895). It's an amazing story, from slavery to international celebrity and Blight goes into the many different facets and contradictions of an extraordinary man. If you're not familiar with Frederick Douglass, it's worth starting with one of his own memoirs first, like Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, which is highly readable and available for free as an ebook. Blight's book will then put that story into context and reflect on it with the greater evenhandedness of the historian.
“As he points out, after the war a battle over the memory of the war began. The South portrayed its efforts as militarily astute and admirable. The notion that slavery was a cause of the war disappears from Southern writing. Slave plantations are portrayed as honorable and idyllic, without any hint of the horrors of slavery.” Read more...
The Best Books on the American Civil War
Drew Gilpin Faust, Historian
Interviews where books by David Blight were recommended
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1
Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory
by David Blight -
2
The Fiery Trial
by Eric Foner -
3
Confederate Reckoning: Power and Politics in the Civil War South
by Stephanie McCurry -
4
Absalom, Absalom
by William Faulkner -
5
The Annotated Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant
by Ulysses S Grant and Elizabeth Samet (editor), Mark Bramhall (narrator)
The Best Books on the American Civil War, recommended by Drew Gilpin Faust
The Best Books on the American Civil War, recommended by Drew Gilpin Faust
“The past is never dead. It’s not even past,” wrote William Faulkner. Here, Drew Gilpin Faust, a leading historian of the American Civil War and former President of Harvard, recommends the best books to read about the conflict between North and South that tore the United States apart from 1861 till 1865 – and beyond.
