I was browsing Amazon today and I noticed that one of the better recent books on Reconstruction is heavily discounted. West from Appomattox: The Reconstruction of America After the Civil War by Heather Cox Richardson published by Yale University Press (2008) 416 pages had been selling for $11.99 on Kindle when I bought it. Now it is just $1.99. You can find it here.
I enjoyed reading this book and I think a lot of you will as well. Richardson’s style is very accessible and the structure of the book makes it easy to follow a complicated story over time. The voices of the characters carry the narrative along. They give variety to the narrative without making it disjointed.
This is an elegant and entertaining book informed by deep scholarship and offering new insights into a 150 year old subject. While it is more than twice as long as Allen Guelzo’s recent Reconstruction: A Concise History, it is significantly shorter than the other major overviews of the period which recommends it to those seeking a history of Reconstruction that can be read during a vacation week in the mountains or at the beach.
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