DOC Global Origins and Development of Seafaring (McDonald Institute Monographs) by James Barrett; Katie Boyle in History

Description

Between 2011 and 2015; the Opinion section of The New York Times published Disunion; a series marking the long string of anniversaries around the Civil War; the most destructive; and most defining; conflict in American history. The works were startling in their range and direction; some taking on major topics; like the Gettysburg Address and the Battle of Fredericksburg; while others tackled subjects whose seemingly incidental quality yielded unexpected riches and new angles. Some come from the country's leading historians; others from those for whom the war figured in private ways; involving an ancestor or a letter found in a trunk. Disunion received wide acclaim for featuring some of the most original thinking about the Civil War in years. For millions of readers; Disunion came to define the Civil War sesquicentennial.Now the historian Ted Widmer; along with Clay Risen and George Kalogerakis of The New York Times; has curated a collection of these pieces; covering the entire history of the Civil War; from Lincoln's election to Appomattox and beyond. Moving chronologically and thematically across all four years of hostilities; this comprehensive and engrossing work examines secession; slavery; battles; and domestic and global politics. Here are previously unheard voices-of women; freed African Americans; and Native Americans-alongside those of Lincoln; Grant; and Lee; portrayed in human as well as historical scale. David Blight sheds light on how Frederick Douglass welcomed South Carolina's secession-an event he knew would catapult the abolitionist movement into the spotlight; Elizabeth R. Varon explores how both North and South clamored to assert that the nation's "ladies;" symbolic of moral purity; had sided with them; Harold Holzer deciphers Lincoln's official silence between his election to the presidency and his inauguration-what his supporters named "masterful inactivity"-and the effects it had on the splintering country. More than any single volume ever published; Disunion reveals the full spectrum of America's bloodiest conflict and illuminates its living legacies.