This Mighty Scourge
“These sixteen essays ask the big questions of the Civil War: Why was it fought? Why did the South lose? What was the effect on those who lived through it? Addressing recent historiography, McPherson, a Pulitzer Prize winner, is both masterly and graceful.”
New York Times Book Review
The Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Battle Cry of Freedom and many other award-winning books, James M. McPherson is America’s preeminent Civil War historian. Now, in this collection of provocative and illuminating essays, McPherson offers fresh insight into many of the most enduring questions about one of the defining moments in our nation’s history. Readers will find insightful pieces on such intriguing figures as Harriet Tubman, John Brown, Jesse James, and William Tecumseh Sherman, and on such vital issues as Confederate military strategy, the failure of peace negotiations to end the war, and the realities and myths of the Confederacy. Combining the finest scholarship with luminous prose, and packed with new information and fresh ideas, this book brings together the most recent thinking by the nation’s leading authority on the Civil War.
Praise