The War for the Common Soldier: How Men Thought, Fought, and Survived in Civil War Armies

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The Union War

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For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War

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River of Death--The Chickamauga Campaign: Volume 1: The Fall of Chattanooga

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Sherman's March: The First Full-Length Narrative of General William T. Sherman's Devastating March through Georgia and the Carolinas

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The Road to Disunion: Volume II: Secessionists Triumphant, 1854-1861

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April 1865: The Month That Saved America

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"Lee is Trapped, and Must be Taken": Eleven Fateful Days after Gettysburg: July 4 - 14, 1863

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The Heart of Hell: The Soldiers' Struggle for Spotsylvania's Bloody Angle

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Their Last Full Measure: The Final Days of the Civil War

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To the Gates of Richmond: The Peninsula Campaign

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The Impending Crisis: America Before the Civil War: 1848-1861

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Terrible Swift Sword

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The Approaching Fury: Voices of the Storm, 1820-1861

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The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West

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The Iron Brigade: The History of the Famous Union Army Brigade During the Civil War

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Conquered: Why the Army of Tennessee Failed

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Meade at Gettysburg: A Study in Command

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Terrible Swift Sword: The Life of General p Carlop H. Sheridan

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Living Hell: The Dark Side of the Civil War

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Crossroads of Freedom: Antietam

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Chancellorsville

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Seceding from Secession: The Civil War, Politics, and the Creation of West Virginia

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The Quartermaster: Montgomery C. Meigs, Lincoln's General, Master Builder of the Union Army

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Southern Storm: Sherman's March to the Sea

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The Bloody Shirt: Terror after Appomattox

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Grant and Sherman: The Friendship That Won the Civil War

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America's Great Debate: Henry Clay, Stephen A. Douglas, and the Compromise That Preserved the Union

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Landscape Turned Red: The Battle of Antietam

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Brandywine: A Military History of the Battle that Lost Philadelphia but Saved America, September 11, 1777

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Rebels in the Making: The Secession Crisis and the Birth of the Confederacy

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Mary Magdalene: Women, the Church, and the Great Deception

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The Secret History of the World

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The Book of Five Rings

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All the Sinners Bleed: A Novel

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Demon Copperhead: A Novel

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Who Cooked the Last Supper?: The Women's History of the World

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Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present

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Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race

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The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women

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The Korean War: A History

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The Little Book of Hygge: Danish Secrets to Happy Living

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Black AF History: The Un-Whitewashed Story of America

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Hell's Princess: The Mystery of Belle Gunness, Butcher of Men

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The Mysterious Case of Rudolf Diesel: Genius, Power, and Deception on the Eve of World War I

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Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers

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Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation

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An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States

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Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World--and Why Things Are Better Than You Think

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The Story of Art Without Men

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The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration

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The Overstory

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The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper

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On Palestine

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The Restaurant: A History of Eating Out

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An American Marriage: A Novel

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The Dead Are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X

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Swingtime for Hitler: Goebbels’s Jazzmen, Tokyo Rose, and Propaganda That Carries a Tune

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The Endurance

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Razorblade Tears: A Novel

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Knowing What We Know: The Transmission of Knowledge: From Ancient Wisdom to Modern Magic

Podcast episode

Lecture 23 - Black Reconstruction in the South: The Freedpeople and the Economics of Land and Labor: Professor Blight begins this lecture in Washington, where the passage of the first Reconstruction Act by Congressional Republicans radically altered the direction of Reconstruction. The Act invalidated the reconstituted Southern legislatures, establishing five military districts in the South and insisting upon black suffrage as a condition to readmission. The eventful year 1868 saw the impeachment of one president (Andrew Johnson) and the election of another (Ulysses S. Grant). Meanwhile, southern African Americans struggle to reap the promises of freedom in the face of economic disempowerment and a committed campaign of white supremacist violence. Transcript Lecture Page

Podcast episode

Lecture 25 - The "End" of Reconstruction: Disputed Election of 1876, and the "Compromise of 1877": This lecture focuses on the role of white southern terrorist violence in brining about the end of Reconstruction. Professor Blight begins with an account the Colfax Massacre. Colfax, Louisiana was the sight of the largest mass murder in U.S. history, when a white mob killed dozens of African Americans in the April of 1873. Two Supreme Court decisions would do in the judicial realm what the Colfax Massacre had done in the political. On the same day as the Colfax Massacre, the Supreme Court offered a narrow reading of the 14th Amendment in the Slaughterhouse cases, signaling a judicial retreat from the radicalism of the early Reconstruction years. The Cruikshank case, two years later, would overturn the convictions of the only three men sentenced for their involvement in Colfax, and marked another step away from reconstruction. Professor Blight concludes with the Panic of 1873 and the seemi

Podcast episode

Lecture 21 - Andrew Johnson and the Radicals: A Contest over the Meaning of Reconstruction: In this lecture, Professor Blight begins his engagement with Reconstruction. Reconstruction, Blight suggests, might best be understood as an extended referendum on the meaning of the Civil War. Even before the war's end, various constituencies in the North attempted to control the shape of the post-war Reconstruction of the South. In late 1863, President Abraham Lincoln offered his lenient "Ten Percent Plan." Six months later, Congressional Republicans concerned by Lincoln's charity rallied behind the more radical provisions of the Wade-Davis Bill. Despite their struggle for control over Reconstruction, Congressional Radicals and President Lincoln managed to work together on two vital pieces of Reconstruction legislation in the first months of 1865--the 13th Amendment, which outlawed slavery in the United States, and the Freedmen's Bureau bill. Transcript Lecture Page

Podcast episode

#04 NULLIFICATION CRISIS: In which we discuss the Tariff of Abominations, the Nullification Crisis of 1832/33, and we wonder who had the pre-Civil War era's most impressive head of hair: John C Calhoun or Andrew Jackson. Plus, Manifest Destiny beckons & we set the stage...

Podcast episode

Lecture 19 - To Appomattox and Beyond: The End of the War and a Search for Meanings: Professor Blight uses Herman Melville's poem "On the Slain Collegians" to introduce the horrifying slaughter of 1864. The architect of the strategy that would eventually lead to Union victory, but at a staggering human cost, was Ulysses S. Grant, brought East to assume control of all Union armies in 1864. Professor Blight narrates the campaigns of 1864, including the Battles of the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, and Cold Harbor, and the siege of Petersburg. While Robert E. Lee battled Grant to a stalemate in Virginia, however, William Tecumseh Sherman's Union forces took Atlanta before beginning their March to the Sea, destroying Confederate morale and fighting power from the inside. Professor Blight closes his lecture with a description of the first Memorial Day, celebrated by African Americans in Charleston, SC 1865. Transcript Lecture Page

Podcast episode

071 Bruce Venter, Saratoga and Hubbardton, 1777: Ben Franklin's World: A Podcast About Early American History

Podcast episode

300 Vast Early America: What do historians wish more people better understood about early American history and why do they wish people had that better understanding? In celebration of the 300th episode of Ben Franklin’s World, we posed these questions to more than 30...

Podcast episode

Flags of Our Fathers: One of the most iconic photographs of all time is the famous Joe Rosenthal photo of the raising of the American flag on Mount Suribachi in the southwest corner of Iwo Jima. In Flags of Our Fathers, director Clint Eastwood weaves together the story of...

Podcast episode

#317- BATTLE OF GETTYSBURG (Part the Third): "the devil's to pay"

Podcast episode

128 Alan Taylor, American Revolutions: A Continental History: Historians often portray the American Revolution as an orderly, if violent, event that moved from British colonists’ high-minded ideas about freedom to American independence from Great Britain and the ratification of the Constitution of 1787. But...

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010 Don N. Hagist, British Soldiers, American War: Voices of the American Revolution: Ben Franklin's World: A Podcast About Early American History

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#06 MEXICAN WAR (Part the Second): In which we continue our discussion of America's war with Mexico. We talk about the military action in California & New Mexico, then cover a battle in Congress over something called the Wilmot Proviso. Finally, we move back down to the Rio Grande,...

Podcast episode

#32 LINCOLN'S INAUGURATION: In which we look at Abraham Lincoln's inaugural journey from Illinois to Washington, D.C. and then his inauguration as the sixteenth President of the United States on March 4, 1861. 

Podcast episode

Lecture 24 - Retreat from Reconstruction: The Grant Era and Paths to "Southern Redemption": This lecture opens with a discussion of the myriad moments at which historians have declared an "end" to Reconstruction, before shifting to the myth and reality of "Carpetbag rule" in the Reconstruction South. Popularized by Lost Cause apologists and biased historians, this myth suggests that the southern governments of the Reconstruction era were dominated by unscrupulous and criminal Yankees who relied on the ignorant black vote to rob and despoil the innocent South. The reality, of course, diverges widely from this image. Among other accomplishments, the Radical state governments that came into existence after 1868 made important gains in African-American rights and public education. Professor Blight closes the lecture with the passage of the 15th Amendment, the waning radicalism of the Republican party after 1870, and the rise of white political terrorism across the South. Transcript Lecture

Podcast episode

#61 CIVIL WAR MEDICINE (Part the First): In which we look at medical aspects of the Civil War.  In this episode we focus on diseases, which killed many many more Civil War soldiers than did wounds.

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Lecture 14 - Never Call Retreat: Military and Political Turning Points in 1863: Professor Blight lectures on the military history of the early part of the war. Beginning with events in the West, Blight describes the Union victories at Fort Donelson and Fort Henry, introduces Union General Ulysses S. Grant, and narrates the horrific battle of Shiloh, fought in April of 1862. Moving back East, the lecture describes the Union General George McClellan's abortive 1862 Peninsula campaign, which introduced the world to Confederate General Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson. The lecture concludes with Confederate General Robert E. Lee's decision to take the battle to the North. Transcript Lecture Page

Podcast episode

Rick Atkinson: The British Are Coming: The War for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775-1777: Author Rick Atkinson returns to the PMML to discuss his latest book titled The British Are Coming, which is the first volume of his new trilogy about the American Revolution.

Podcast episode

#65 MAYHEM IN MISSOURI (Part the Second): In which we continue our look at the mayhem that broke out in Missouri at the start of the Civil War.  In this episode we cover the 'Battle of Carthage,' and set the stage for the Battle of Wilson's Creek.

Podcast episode

147 Don Hagist, British Soldiers, American War: What about the British Redcoats? When we discuss the military history of the American War for Independence, we tend to focus on specific battles or details about the men who served in George Washington’s Continental Army. Rarely do we take the...

Podcast episode

#62 CIVIL WAR MEDICINE (Part the Second): In which we continue our discussion of medical issues affecting Civil War soldiers.  In this episode we look at what happened to a soldier after he was wounded on the battlefield.

Podcast episode

#03 MISSOURI COMPROMISE: In which we take a look at the crisis surrounding Missouri's admission into the Union as a slave state, and Henry Clay's pivotal role in brokering the ensuing compromise in 1820. 

Podcast episode

158 The Revolutionaries' Army: Between 1775 and 1783, an estimated 230,000 men served in the Continental Army with another approximately 145,000 men serving in state militia units. Who were the men who served in these military ranks? What motivated them to take up arms and join the...

Podcast episode

#324- BATTLE OF GETTYSBURG (Part the Tenth): "go like hell"

Podcast episode

Lecture 15 - Lincoln, Leadership, and Race: Emancipation as Policy: Professor Blight follows Robert E. Lee's army north into Maryland during the summer of 1862, an invasion that culminated in the Battle of Antietam, fought in September of 1862. In the wake of Antietam, Abraham Lincoln issued his preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, a document that changed the meaning of the war forever. Professor Blight suggests some of the ways in which Americans have attempted to come to grips with the enigmatic Lincoln, and argues that, in the end, it may be Lincoln's capacity for change that was his most important characteristic. The lecture concludes with the story of John Washington, a Virginia slave whose concerted action suggests the central role American slaves played in securing their own freedom. Transcript Lecture Page

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#66 WILSON'S CREEK (Part the First): In which we discuss the activities and maneuvering of both sides prior to the Battle of Wilson's Creek (August 10, 1861) in southwest Missouri.

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Lecture 26 - Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory: Having dealt with the role of violence and the Supreme Court in bringing about the end of Reconstruction in his last lecture, Professor Blight now turns to the role of national electoral politics, focusing in particular on the off-year Congressional election of 1874 and the Presidential election of 1876. 1874 saw the return of the Democrats to majority status in the Senate and the House of Representatives, as voters sick of corruption and hurt by the Panic of 1873 fled the Republicans in droves. According to many historians, the contested election of 1876, and the "Compromise of 1877," which followed it, marked the official end of Reconstruction. After an election tainted by fraud and violence, Republicans and Democrats brokered a deal by which Republican Rutherford B. Hayes took the White House in exchange for restoration of "home rule" for the South. Transcript Lecture Page

Podcast episode

Gary W. Gallagher: Civil War Myths and Misinformation

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Lecture 17 - Homefronts and Battlefronts: "Hard War" and the Social Impact of the Civil War: Professor Blight begins his lecture with a description of the sea change in Civil War scholarship heralded by the Social History revolution of the 1960s and 1970s. Along with a focus on the experience of the common solider, women, and African Americans, a central component of this shift in scholarly emphasis was an increased interest in the effects of the war on the Union and Confederate home fronts. After suggesting some of the ways in which individual Americans experienced the war, Professor Blight moves to a discussion of the war's effect on industry and economics, North and South. The lecture concludes with a description of the increased activism of the federal government during the war, an activism that found expression in finance, agriculture, taxation, building railroads, and, most importantly, in emancipation. Transcript Lecture Page

Podcast episode

‘Robert E. Lee: A Life’, with Dr. Allen Guelzo

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#89 FORTS HENRY & DONELSON (Part the First): In which we give the background to Ulysses S. Grant's February, 1862 campaign to capture Forts Henry & Donelson in northern Tennessee.