The best books about the South (USA)

Nina Silber deftly examines the often conflicting and politically contentious ways in which Americans remembered the Civil War era during the years of the Depression, the New Deal, and World War II. In doing so, she reveals how the debates and events of that earlier period resonated so profoundly with New Deal rhetoric about state power, emerging civil rights activism, labor organizing and trade unionism, and popular culture in wartime.

At the heart of this book is an examination of how historical memory offers people a means of understanding and defining themselves in the present. Silber reveals how, during a moment of enormous national turmoil, the events and personages of the Civil War provided a framework for reassessing national identity, class conflict, and racial and ethnic division. 

More than 150 years after the end of the Civil War, scores of websites, articles, and organizations repeat claims that anywhere between 500 and 100,000 free and enslaved African Americans fought willingly as soldiers in the Confederate army. Such claims would have shocked anyone who served in the army during the war itself. Searching for Black Confederates is the first scholarly study to explain how imprecise contemporary accounts, poorly understood primary-source material, and other misrepresentations helped to fuel the rise of this myth, beginning in the mid-1970s. 

Searching for Black Confederates also explores the roles that thousands of personal body servants and forced laborers actually performed in support of the Confederate army. Regardless of the dangers these men faced in camp, on the march, and on the battlefield, their legal status remained unchanged. The thousands of enslaved men that traveled with the army serves as an important reminder of the central importance that the Confederacy placed on protecting slavery.

Beautiful, haunting, and grotesque, The Carp-Faced Boy and Other Tales offers stories reminiscent of traditional Japanese folktales alongside contemporary horror fiction. Matsuura’s unique voice, in its poignancy and lightheartedness, is unforgettable.

As the United States teeters on the brink of Civil War and death threats pour into the White House, Col. Charles P. Rook takes on the responsibility of presidential protection. Meanwhile, a mysterious killer hired by a secessionist leader slips into Washington, D.C., seeking to murder Abraham Lincoln. As the bodies pile up, Rook realizes that he’s caught in a dangerous game with a cold-blooded killer who will stop at nothing to complete his mission. His best hope is Portia, a runaway slave who holds the key to the assassin’s identity—if only she can stay alive long enough to deliver it. Packed with dynamic characters, rich period detail, and a sinister villain, The First Assassin is a riveting thriller for fans of historical fiction. Praise from Vince Flynn: “An excellent book—it’s like The Day of the Jackal, set in 1861 Washington.”

The sensational true story of America’s first It Girl. In 1900, 16-year-old Florence Nesbit arrived in Manhattan “with nothing but her looks.” She would soon be seen by millions as the iconic Gibson Girl and most photographed woman of the era. Moving quickly from artists’ studios to the stage (when she became Evelyn) she ended up on the witness stand, where she not only affected the course of the new century’s culture but sealed her fate as “the girl in the red velvet swing.”

After her insanely jealous millionaire husband, Harry K. Thaw, murdered famed architect Stanford White in what was dubbed “The Crime of the Century,” Evelyn was thrust into the limelight again. The girl “with a face to die for” ignited a scandal that signaled the beginning of a national obsession with the currencies of power that still feed the American dream -- youth, beauty, wealth, celebrity, and sex.

Systematic Land Theft is a well-documented outline of U.S. history regarding Black and Indigenous land theft. Land Theft compresses 300 years of archives into 1200 footnotes, 12 chapters, and countless literary accounts told by Black farmers, civil rights leaders, and pioneers in the agricultural movement.

This is a heart-wrenching chronicle of how Blacks went from owning upwards of 16 to 20 million acres to the current estimate of 4.5 million acres. Jillian Hishaw thoroughly explains why over 97% of U.S. land is owned by White Americans and less than 3% is owned by people of color. The strategic immigration of Europeans and the adoption of English common law led to the murderous dispossession of tribal land as well. U.S. property laws have tactically benefitted Whites by allowing them to acquire stolen land and using it as collateral to secure their economic position for centuries. As Blacks continue to lose 30,000 acres per year in land ownership the need for legal and economic resolutions is immediate.

Buy this book directly from the author here. 

From the contest that pitted Thomas Jefferson against John Adams in 1800 through 2020’s vicious, chaotic matchup between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, Stuckey documents the cycle of despicable discourse in presidential campaigns. Looking beyond the character and the ideology of the candidates, Stuckey explores the broader political, economic, and cultural milieus in which each took place. In doing so, she reveals the conditions that exacerbate and enable our worst political instincts, producing discourses that incite factions, target members of the polity, encourage undemocratic policy, and actively work against the national democratic project.

Keenly analytical and compulsively readable, Deplorable provides context for the 2016 and 2020 elections, revealing them as part of a cyclical―and perhaps downward-spiraling―pattern in American politics. Deplorable offers more than a comparison of the worst of our elections. It helps us understand these shameful and disappointing moments in our political history, leaving one important question: Can we avoid them in the future?

A Fire in the Wilderness tells the story of that perilous time when the future of the United States depended on the Union Army’s success in a desolate forest roughly sixty-five miles from the nation’s capital. Robert E. Lee, who faced tremendous difficulties replacing fallen soldiers, lost 11,125 men—or 17% of his entire force during the battle. On the opposing side, the Union suffered 17,666 casualties.

The alarming casualties do not begin to convey the horror of this battle, one of the most gruesome in American history. The impenetrable forest and gunfire smoke made it impossible to view the enemy. Officers couldn’t even see their own men during the fighting. The incessant gunfire caused the woods to catch fire, resulting in hundreds of men burning to death. “It was as though Christian men had turned to fiends, and hell itself had usurped the place of the earth,” wrote one officer.

It’s Labor Day weekend, 1935, and the Darling Dahlias―the garden club in little Darling, Alabama―are trying to keep their cool at the end of a sizzling summer. This isn’t easy, though, since there’s a firebug on the loose in Darling. A dangerous hurricane is poised offshore and a hurricane of a different sort is making a whirlwind campaign stop: the much-loved-much-hated senator from Louisiana, Huey P. Long, whom President Roosevelt calls the “most dangerous man in America.”

The people of Darling face the challenges of the Great Depression with courage and grace, reminding us that friends offer the best of themselves to each other, community is what holds us together, and even when life seems too hot to handle, there’s always hope.

In February 1865, the end was clearly in sight for the Confederate government. An Honorable Defeat is the story of the four months that saw the surrender of the South and the assassination of Lincoln by Southern partisans. It is also the story of two men, antagonists yet political partners, who struggled during this time to achieve their own differing visions for the South: Jefferson Davis, the autocratic president of the Confederate States, who vowed never to surrender whatever the cost; and the practical and warm General John C. Breckinridge, Secretary of War, who hoped pragmatism would save the shattered remnants of the land he loved so dearly.

William C. Davis traces the astounding flight of these men, and the entire Confederate cabinet, as they flee south from Richmond by train, then by mule, then on foot.