Wednesday, November 01, 2017

Five books to make you less stupid about the Civil War

"For the past 50 years, some of this country’s most celebrated historians have taken up the task of making Americans less stupid about the Civil War," writes Ta-Nehisi Coates at The Atlantic. One title from that effort:
Reading the Man: A Portrait of Robert E. Lee: Elizabeth Pryor’s biography of Lee, through Lee’s own words, helps part with a lot of stupid out there about Lee—chiefly that he was, somehow, “anti-slavery.” It dispenses with the boatload of stupid out there which hails the military genius of Lee while ignoring the world that all of that genius was actually trying to build.
Read about another book on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue