Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 156

October 19, 2020: UN Histories: The League of Nations

[October 24thwill mark the 75th anniversary of the official establishment of the United Nations. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy five histories connected to the UN, leading up to a weekend post on global interconnectedness in 2020.]On how and why the UN’s predecessor failed at its central mission, and how it succeeded nonetheless.The League of Nations, created as part of the January 1919 Paris Peace Conference that formally concluded the Great War (later known of course as World War I), was designed specifically to prevent future wars. The 26 articles of the League’s Covenant went far beyond that and into many other arenas and topics, of course, but the document’s opening phrases—“In order to promote international co-operation and to achieve international peace and security”—make clear the primacy of global peace as the organization’s founding objective. And even before the Second World War put the final nail in that objective and thus in the League itself (which ceased performing any meaningful actions as of 1939 and was formally replaced by the 1943 vote I’ll discuss tomorrow), a number of other conflicts (including the Chaco War, the Second Sino-Japanese War, and the Spanish Civil War) had demonstrated the League’s inability to achieve international peace in any consistent way.There were many factors that contributed to the League’s failure, including perhaps fundamental, unchangeable realities of human nature and society that make war such a persistent, enduring element. Yet there’s no doubt that one prominent factor which weakened the League from the outset of its existence was the United States’s decision not to join the organization. President Woodrow Wilson, whose January 1918 Fourteen Points speech had served as a launching point for the concept of the League, spent much of 1919 working to convince Congress and the American people of its significance and of the necessity of joining its efforts. But he did not succeed, at least not with Congress, which, led by isolationist figures such as Senator and longtime Wilson adversary Henry Cabot Lodge, ultimately voted not to ratify the Treaty of Versailles or join the League of Nations, a choice that greatly weakened the international organization and made its chances for success far smaller.Yet even if the League was unable to maintain or foster international peace—and again, it’s quite possible that no organization could ever come close to achieving those goals—that does not mean that this groundbreaking entity did not produce meaningful successes. Many of them came in response to specific territorial disputes and conflicts, such as Germany and Poland’s hostilities over the Upper Silesia region in which the League successfully intervened in 1921-22; this dispute might well have turned to war without the League. And on a truly international level, perhaps the League’s most enduring success lay in the creation of the Nansen Passport, the first internationally recognized refugee identification and travel document. Brainchild of the League’s High Commissioner for Refugees Fridtjof Nansen, who along with his Nansen International Office for Refugees received the 1938 Nobel Peace Prize, the Nansen Passport represented a vital step in recognizing, engaging with, and ameliorating the plight of global refugees and migrants. Throughout the 20th and into the 21st century, long after the League of Nations ceased to exist, the UN’s own strategies for aiding this vulnerable international community remain indebted to the Nansen Passport, reminding us that the League’s legacy is not quite as one-sided as it seems.Next UN history tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think?

October 17-18, 2020: Confederate Memory: Adam Domby’s The False Cause

[On October 12th, 1870, Robert E. Lee died—but not before the post-war deification of Lee was already well underway. So this week I’ve AmericanStudied that process and other aspects of Confederate memory, leading up to this special post on a great recent book on the subject!]On two contexts for one of the year’s most significant public scholarly books.Besides its obvious relevance to this week’s series, I decided to focus this weekend post on Adam Domby’s The False Cause: Fraud, Fabrication, and White Supremacy in Confederate Memory (2020) in part because Domby’s book could easily have been, and really should have been, included in my Recent Reads post a week and a half back on Civil War scholarship. The False Causeconcludes with a chapter on the myth of “black Confederates” that complements Kevin Levin’s book perfectly; and the whole of Domby’s project could be read as another answer to Heather Cox Richardson’s titular question of How the South Won the Civil War . Moreover, while all three of those books are well worth your time (and purchase), I would say that the summer of 2020 events about which I wrote in Friday’s post have rendered Domby’s book the most salient of the three (and one of the most salient books released this year period); it’s no coincidence, for example, that his first chapter, “Rewriting the Past in Stone,” focuses on Confederate monuments and statues. If you want to read one recent scholarly work that helps explain both why those statues exist and why it’s more than okay for them to come down, I’d go with False Cause.As with any great scholarly work, Domby’s book also got me thinking about other elements, histories that complement and extend those on which he focuses (which tend in one way or another to be either public, like those statues; or personal, like veterans’ pension claims). Having gone to school in Virginia in the 1980s, one thing I’d highlight is the role of the educational system in creating and, especially, amplifying and reiterating Lost Cause myths. James Loewen’s book Lies My Teacher Told Me (1995) could get a sequel focused entirely on the Civil War and not have any difficult filling the pages; I know for a fact that I had at least two teachers who called it “The War between the States,” and wouldn’t be surprised if one of them in particular had slipped up and called it “The War of Northern Aggression” at some point. And of course for many decades those educational myths didn’t end with high school graduation, as the Dunning School and its multi-generational legacies meant that both the Civil War and Reconstruction were taught in a Lost Cause way in far too many college classrooms as well. Myths like the Lost Cause can be created anywhere (as Domby nicely traces), but it seems to me that they require educational support if they’re going to be passed along to entire generations.There’s another prominent societal mechanism through which American collective myths have long been disseminated, however, and it’s one that really took off right in the early 20th century period on which Domby’s book especially focuses: the movies. In the same late spring/early summer moment that the Confederate statue events were unfolding, a parallel controversy developed around Gone with the Wind, which HBO temporarily removedfrom its new streaming service (in order to bring it back with additional historical contextualization). I’ve written many times, from my first published article to online pieces both here and elsewhere, about the destructive myths that both Mitchell’s novel and the film adaptation helped propagate and popularize. But during that 2020 controversy, historian Nina Silber put it succinctly and potently, in the title of a post for the Washington Post’s Made by History blog: “Gone with the Wind is also a Confederate monument, but on film instead of stone.” Indeed it is, and taken together the novel and film have likely spread the Lost Cause myth to more Americans than just about any other stories or histories.Next series starts Monday,BenPS. What do you think? Other aspects of Confederate or Civil War memory you’d highlight?

October 16, 2020: Confederate Memory: Flags, Statues, and Names

[On October 12th, 1870, Robert E. Lee died—but not before the post-war deification of Lee was already well underway. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy that process and other aspects of Confederate memory, leading up to a special post on a great recent book on the subject!]On long-overdue changes, and why we need to go further. As I draft this post in mid-June (what can I say, I have a lot of locked-down time on my hands), the George Floyd/#BlackLivesMatterprotests have produced (among many other effects) a striking set of changes when it comes to the nation’s longstanding and frustratingly omnipresent commemorations of the Confederacy. Statues of Confederate generals and leaders are coming down all over the country, and their former pedestals and controversial locations are being turned into sites for art, performance, and collective celebrations. The US armed forces are considering renaming bases and facilities named after Confederate figures, and a bipartisan Congressional committee has endorsed the plan (although, shocking precisely no one, the most white supremacist president in history disagrees). And, in one of the smaller yet also more striking moments, NASCAR has announced that it will no longer allow Confederate flags (long a central presence at NASCAR events) to be part of their races or speedways in any way.On the one hand, these changes seem like nothing more than common sense, a long-overdue response to the deeply bizarre phenomenon of the United States commemorating and celebrating a group of traitors who fought against and sought to destroy their own nation. But on the other hand, that phenomenon has been part of the nation for more than 150 years, and as those various examples illustrate has permeated so many official and unofficial levels of American society and culture (well beyond the former Confederate states). Like the schools named after Nathan Bedford Forrest (and other Confederates) that have , these ubiquitous Confederate presences have become not just accepted but in many ways second-nature, a fundamental part of the American landscape that for far too long and for far too many of us has seemed unworthy even of comment. So while it might seem clear that we should never have featured Confederate commemorations, or should have done away with them decades if not centuries ago, this moment and process of disentangling us from all those layers of collective memory is nonetheless impressive and important.But while I do believe that there is significant value in such symbolic changes, we can’t stop there. As I mentioned in one of my current reading posts last week, historian Heather Cox Richardson’s vital new book is entitled How the South Won the Civil War: Oligarchy, Democracy, and the Continuing Fight for the Soul of America (2020); as I traced in this Saturday Evening Post column inspired by her book, she doesn’t mean the presence of Confederate names and commemorations. While of course white supremacy has been foundational to America since 1619 (and before, but that makes for a clear demarcation point), it’s nonetheless fair to say that Reconstruction marked a potential turning point, a moment when the nation could begin to move toward more genuine equality and justice for all Americans. But through the various histories and conversations I’ve traced this week, among many others, America became instead more white supremacist than ever in the late 19thcentury, and has in so many ways remained so ever since. Which is to say, rooting out the Confederate legacies in American society and culture is gonna be a much more involved process than changing some names and taking down some statues and flags—but I’m sure glad we’re starting to do that. Special post this weekend,BenPS. What do you think? Other aspects of Confederate or Civil War memory you’d highlight?

October 15, 2020: Confederate Memory: The Shaaras

[On October 12th, 1870, Robert E. Lee died—but not before the post-war deification of Lee was already well underway. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy that process and other aspects of Confederate memory, leading up to a special post on a great recent book on the subject!]On the benefits and drawbacks of bestselling historical novels about the Civil War.As I detailed in this post on Joshua Chamberlain and his heroic, battle- and potentially Union-saving charge down Little Round Top at the Battle of Gettysburg, I first learned about Chamberlain the same way I imagine a great many Americans have: through Michael Shaara’s Pulitzer-winning novel The Killer Angels (1974, and source for the 1993 film Gettysburg in which Chamberlain was portrayed brilliantly by Jeff Daniels). While of course a novel shouldn’t be the sole or central way we learn about history, that process has to start somewhere; and if a novel is a hugely successful and popular one (as Shaara’s was upon release and has been ever since), it can provide precisely such a starting point for further investigation and understanding for a great many audience members indeed. I know that Civil War historians are sometimes frustrated by how much emphasis is placed on Chamberlain, an emphasis that is certainly due to Shaara’s (and then the film’s) depiction; but from everything I can tell the book gets both him and the histories quite right, and in any case it helped add them to our collective memories which to my mind can only be a good thing.While Chamberlain is a main character in Shaara’s novel, he’s far from the book’s only focus, and another key element of The Killer Angelsis its presentation of multi-layered, deeply human versions of all the battle’s key generals and leaders, including Confederate ones like Robert E. Lee, James Longstreet, and George Pickett. Of course those men were all human, and so there’s nothing necessarily wrong with depicting them as such (and indeed a novel that didn’t present its characters as human would almost certainly be a failure). But in a historical novel about a Civil War battle, featuring such prominent, humanizing portrayals of Confederate generals makes it quite likely (if not indeed inevitable) that readers will sympathize with those characters as much as with Union leaders like Chamberlain, and thus will find themselves in at least some key ways “rooting” for both sides in the battle. That may make for compelling fiction (and Killer Angels is indeed one of the most readable historical novels I’ve encountered), but it also makes for troubling (to say the least) history, for any Civil War battle and doubly so for one that so influenced the course of the war and American history.After Michael Shaara’s tragic death from a heart attack in 1988 (when he was only 59 years old), his son Jeff took up the legacy of his Civil War historical novels, publishing both Gods and Generals (1996 and a prequel to Killer Angels) and The Last Full Measure (1998 and a sequel to both). I’ll admit that I haven’t read either of those books, nor any of Jeff Shaara’s many other historical novels (four of which are set in the Civil War’s Western Theater, and the others set during other time periods/wars), so I don’t mean to imply that this paragraph’s critiques are necessarily applicable to those books (I’d love to hear in comments from folks who have read either or both of Jeff’s books). But I have seen the 2003 film adaptation of Gods and Generals , and would entirely agree with historian Steven Woolworth’s assessment (in a scholarly review in the Journal of American History) that it is “the most pro-Confederate film since Birth of a Nation, a veritable celluloid celebration of slavery and treason.” Again, I don’t know if that’s the case with the novel, and I’m not suggesting it’s the case with Killer Angels—but I would argue that there is a connection between depicting Confederate and Union generals at a battle like Gettysburg with equal sympathy and ending up another convert to that neo-Confederate, Lost Cause perspective on the battle, the war, and America. Last memories tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other aspects of Confederate or Civil War memory you’d highlight?

October 14, 2020: Confederate Memory: Henry Adams and Henry James

[On October 12th, 1870, Robert E. Lee died—but not before the post-war deification of Lee was already well underway. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy that process and other aspects of Confederate memory, leading up to a special post on a great recent book on the subject!]On the parallel but not identical Confederate veteran protagonists of two 1880s novels.In a chapter in my dissertation/first book on “the South question” during the Gilded Age, I argued that the period’s dominant cultural form related to that post-Civil War national debate was not the familiar “romance of reunion” (in which Northern and Southern white characters fall in love and mutually agree to forget or at least move past the Civil War and sectional division; that genre certainly did exist and I started the chapter by analyzing one representative example, controversial physician S. Weir Mitchell’s 1884 novel In War Time) but rather what I called the “narrative of conversion”: Northern and national characters and audiences being converted to the Southern, Lost Cause, neo-Confederate perspective on the war, on history, and most of all on America’s identity and future. I’ve encountered many literary examples of that conversion narrative, including the James D. Lynch poem Redpath about which I wrote in yesterday’s post. But in that chapter I focused on two of the most striking such Gilded Age literary conversion narratives: Henry Adams’ anonymously published Democracy: An American Novel (1880) and Henry James’ The Bostonians (1886). The male protagonists of both novels are Confederate veterans who have come North—to Washington, DC in the case of Adams’ John Carrington, to Boston in the case of James’ Basil Ransom—and find themselves wooing Northern women, Madeleine Lee and Verena Tarrant respectively. They pursue these women not only romantically, but also and interconnectedly in an effort to convert them to their Southern, neo-Confederate experiences and perspectives on the war, its aftermaths, region, and nation. They find themselves opposed in those efforts by telling alternative suitors: Illinois Senator and presidential hopeful Silas Ratcliffe in Adams, abolitionist and suffrage activist Olive Chancellor in James (who may be pursuing Verena out of romantic desire, although that theme is ambiguous as you might expect from an 1880s novel, but certainly wants her for the cause in any case). And John and Basil overcome that opposition, and a great deal of uncertainty from Madeleine and Verena, to win the hands of these women, in endings that (as I read them in my book and would still read them) symbolically position these Confederate veterans and their neo-Confederate perspectives as potent forces in the shaping of the national future. The concluding lines of James’s novel depict both Basil’s triumph and that national future as somewhat less than ideal, however: as Basil takes her away from Olive, Verena says “Ah, now I am glad” but is revealed to be in tears; and the narrator notes, in the book’s final sentence, “It is to be feared that with the union, so far from brilliant, into which she was about to enter, these were not the last she was destined to shed.” The narration of The Bostonians is as multi-layered and ambiguous as is the case in most James works, and this moment could be read as simply one final example of that narrative complexity. But I would also argue (perhaps more strongly than I did in my book, although I hope I noted this distinction there as well) that James’ novel is more a depiction of Basil’s conversion of Verena and influence on her/the nation’s future, whereas Adams’ book is more a celebration of John’s conversion of Madeleine (or at least presents that arc as a more overtly and clearly positive development). Moreover, while no one in James’ novel is particularly admirable, Basil is quite an asshole; while John is far more idealized by Adams’ narrator and novel. Which makes these books two complementary but interestingly distinct primary sources for our analysis of the late 19th century rise and dominance of these neo-Confederate figures and narratives. Next memories tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other aspects of Confederate or Civil War memory you’d highlight?

October 13, 2020: Confederate Memory: James D. Lynch’s Poetry

[On October 12th, 1870, Robert E. Lee died—but not before the post-war deification of Lee was already well underway. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy that process and other aspects of Confederate memory, leading up to a special post on a great recent book on the subject!]On three poems that illustrate the evolution of Confederate memory.1)      Robert E. Lee, or Heroes of the South (1876): Mississippi Confederate veteran and neo-Confederate, white supremacist Reconstruction lawyer Lynch’s first published literary work reflects that ongoing post-war deification of Lee, not only in the text’s details but in its status as a national bestseller. Lynch turns Lee into a classical, epic hero, and one who embodies the ideal legacy of the U.S. (despite of course leading armies against it); all of which is clearly and concisely illustrated by one sentence from the “Summarium” before the start of Canto I: “He lands on an island, where an old Revolutionary soldier predicts to him his fate, and, conditionally, that of his country.” 2)      Redpath, or the Ku Klux Tribunal (1877): Leeuses Civil War history to make the case for its post-war, neo-Confederate perspective, but in his next published poem Lynch developed those contemporary white supremacist arguments much more overtly. He did so through a particularly insidious choice of protagonist and plot: Redpath, an aide to a Radical Republican Congressman, is sent to the South to investigate the KKK for the ongoing Congressional hearings into the domestic terrorist organization; but instead his experiences convert him entirely to the KKK’s perspective, and he comes back to Washington to make the case for why the Klan is necessary and vital in this post-war moment. Long before Thomas W. Dixon and Birth of a Nation and Gone with the Wind, Lynch paved the way for such cultural celebrations of the KKK. 3)      “Columbia Saluting the Nations” (1893): Lynch’s final published poem was by far his most prominent, as it and he were chosen as the official salutation for the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. The poem itself includes no overt neo-Confederate sentiments, advancing instead the kind of national celebration you’d expect for that occasion. But that’s precisely the point—that by the 1890s, a Confederate veteran, white supremacist Reconstruction lawyer, and author of poems like Lee and Redpath could be chosen to serve in this ostensibly unifying national role, a reflection of just how fully this neo-Confederate perspective and narrative had come to dominate American culture and society by the end of the 19th century. Next memories tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other aspects of Confederate or Civil War memory you’d highlight?

October 12, 2020: Confederate Memory: Lee and Longstreet

[On October 12th, 1870, Robert E. Lee died—but not before the post-war deification of Lee was already well underway. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy that process and other aspects of Confederate memory, leading up to a special post on a great recent book on the subject!]This is one of those posts where I’ll ask you instead to read a different piece of mine: this particularly personal Saturday Evening Post Considering History column , on my own and our collective narratives of Robert E. Lee and James Longstreet. I think that column illustrates the most damaging effects of the deification of Lee, both for generations of young Southerners and for our national collective memories (of the war, but also and especially of Reconstruction and all that followed). Next memories tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other aspects of Confederate or Civil War memory you’d highlight?

October 10-11, 2020: Crowd-sourced Recent Reads

 

[Last October I had a lot of fun sharing and AmericanStudying some of my recent reads, and it brought out great responses and nominations for a crowd-sourced weekend post. So this year I wanted to do the same, and leading up this post featuring more of those responses and nominations—add yours in comments, please!]

Following up Wednesday’s post on Washington Black and The Water Dancer, Walter Greason tweets out the connections to the “Black Speculative Arts Movement, #AfrofuturistDesign, and the #WakandaSyllabus.”

Following up Friday’s post and a request for other primary sources, Craig Reid shares, “The White Declaration of Independence created by the White Government Union and Red Shirts in Wilmington, NC in 1898. I showed it to my students this week while teaching about Jim Crow, the Wilmington NC Coup of 1898, and Tulsa OK Massacre of 1921. The students were blown away by the document.”

Other recent reads:

Craig Reid adds, “Also, Marvin Gaye's song, ‘Inner City Blues’ is as relevant in 2020 as it was when it was released in 1971.”

Jeff Renye highlights Mary Butts’ essay on the supernatural in literature, "Ghosties and Ghoulies."

Jenny Fielding nominates, “Real Life—on the Booker shortlist. The best fiction I've read all year.”

Sabrina Marie shares “The Program series by Suzanne Young.”

Paige Wallace writes, “I just started the first book in an eventual trilogy by a friend of mine. I’m only 1/3 of the way through it and already in love with it. The Bone Shard Daughter by Andrea Stewart.”

Derek Tang argues, “The Audacity of Hope, as the title implies, is such a wonderful vision of what this country should really look like.”

DeMisty Bellingernominates Friday Black, and adds, “I'm now reading A Tree Grows in Brooklyn for the first time. I have no time to read extra stuff since school started, so it's going slow (stolen paragraphs over a snack while standing up slow).”

Petri Flint writes, “A couple I've enjoyed recently: Laymon, Heavy; Evaristo, Girl, Woman, Other.”

Nicole Sterbinsky highlights “Akata Witch by Nnedi Okorafor.”

Andrew DaSilva read “Something Out There by Nadime Gordimer.”

Kate Wells shares “Bow Grip by Ivan Coyote and Midnight Riotby Ben Aaronovitch.”

Kaitlynn Chase writes, “Intimations by Zadie Smith was phenomenal!”

And in response to Thursday’s post and my request for other public scholarly recent reads:

Matthew Goguen writes, “Just finished Yellow Bird by Sierra Crane Murdoch. Excellent read!”

Jenny Fielding shares, “Cory Doctorow's latest is published in full on Medium. I recently wrote on this topic too and referred to his piece extensively.”

Jessica Blouin highlights this great piece from a very impressive high school student.

And I’ll end on a very happy note: my colleague and friend Katy Covino writes, “I'd like to give a shout-out to a recently-released professional book that explores how and why teachers remain committed to the profession of teaching. It was a joy to co-author one of the chapters with two hard-working and incredibly-generous educators, Garrett Zeckerand Hannah Britten. [BEN: Also two of my favorite FSU alums ever!] Together, we developed a model of entwined symbiosis and outlined its relationship to our work promoting culturally responsive teaching. Brief review here.”

Next series starts Monday,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Recent reads you’d share?

October 9, 2020: Recent Reads: Susie King Taylor’s Memoir

[Last October I had a lot of fun sharing and AmericanStudying some of my recent reads, and it brought out great responses and nominations for a crowd-sourced weekend post. So this year I wanted to do the same, and would love to hear what you’ve been reading for another weekend list!]On one of my favorite primary source discoveries for my forthcoming book.As I wrote in this update post on Of Thee I Sing: The Contested History of American Patriotism (due out in January 2021—watch this space for more info!), one of the best parts of researching and writing that book was uncovering and sharing some relatively unknown historical texts, figures, and moments (“unknown” is always a fraught concept when it comes to history, but at the very least these are histories that do not occupy prominent roles in our collective memories). I hope that every chapter features at least one or two of them, but perhaps my favorite is part of the Civil War chapter: Susie King Taylor’s memoir, Reminiscences of My Life in Camp with the 33rd United States Colored Troops Late 1stSouth Carolina Volunteers (1902). That Documenting the American Southintroduction to Taylor’s book by scholar Meredith Malburne details Taylor’s striking life, from a childhood in slavery to her escape during the Civil War (when she was just 14 years old), her wartime work as a nurse (still a teenager), and her extensive experiences of both the Reconstruction South, the post-Reconstruction North, and the arc of late 19thcentury American history. As Malburne notes, we know much of that history through Taylor’s own writing, which of course makes it somewhat more uncertain (or at least shaded by her personal perspective and biases, as any personal narrative is) but also reflects the vital historical and cultural role that such memoirs can play, the way they portray (as Thomas Wentworth Higginson puts it in his Introduction) “the plain record of simple lives, led in stormy periods.” That’s more than enough reason to read Taylor’s short and engaging book (available in full at that same site)—which I’ll leave you to go do!Crowd-sourced post this weekend,BenPS. So one more time: what do you think? Recent reads you’d share for the weekend post?

October 8, 2020: Recent Reads: Civil War Scholarship

[Last October I had a lot of fun sharing and AmericanStudying some of my recent reads, and it brought out great responses and nominations for a crowd-sourced weekend post. So this year I wanted to do the same, and would love to hear what you’ve been reading for another weekend list!]On three great books that reflect the breadth of contemporary Civil War scholarship (along with Adam Domby’s The False Cause, on which more as part of next week’s series).1)      Searching for Black Confederates (2019): I’ve been writing about Kevin Levin for nearly the whole of this blog’s history, and with good reason: his blog Civil War Memory was and remains one of the most potent inspirations for own public scholarly blogging. But while I’m thus clearly a fan of all of Levin’s work, I would say without qualification that Searching is his best work to date, a deeply researched, convincingly argued, compellingly written investigation into and dismantling of what he calls in his subtitle The Civil War’s Most Persistent Myth. This is public scholarly writing at its finest, and the best argument for the evolving field of Civil War memory studies that I can imagine. 2)      How the South Won the Civil War (2020): I honestly didn’t plan for this post to be an acknowledgments for my own online writing, but I have to be honest, historian Heather Cox Richardson (and especially her wonderful We’re History website ) has been another hugely influential figure in the evolution of my public scholarly work and identity. Richardson’s own public scholarly profile has exploded this year, thanks to her hugely popular, nightly “Letters from an American” posts. But to my mind her best work this year, and quite possibly the best work of her very distinguished career to date, is How the South Won the Civil War—a book that is partly about the post-Civil War West, partly about 20thand 21st century white supremacy, and entirely an example of how the best Civil War scholarship is both revelatory about the Civil War and profoundly relevant to our own moment. 3)      Dr. Mary Walker’s Civil War (2020): While both of those books are about the Civil War’s aftermaths, legacies, and memories at least as much as the war itself, it’s important to note that there is (as there will always be) still a place for scholarly writing focused centrally on wartime histories and stories. The best such book I read this year is this one, by recently retired history professor (and my longtime Twitter friend) Theresa Kaminski. Kaminski has been writing about what she calls “fascinating, scrappy women” for many books and projects now, and Walker is a great example: a Civil War physician who became the only woman to receive the Medal of Honor, and a lifelong women’s rights activist to boot. I could tell you more, but Kaminski tells it better than I could—so check out this great book, and all three of these models of Civil War scholarship!Last recent read tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Recent reads you’d share for the weekend post?