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He named a five best list of books which "capture the hope and turmoil of the post-Civil War period" for the Wall Street Journal.
One title to make the list:
ReconstructionRead about the other four books on Budiansky's list.
By Eric Foner
Harper & Row, 1988
"Nearly two and a half centuries had passed since twenty black men and women were landed in Virginia from a Dutch ship," Eric Foner writes early in "Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution." "From this tiny seed had grown the poisoned fruit of plantation slavery, which, in profound and contradictory ways, shaped the course of American development." If there is a scrap of paper from the Reconstruction era that Mr. Foner, a history professor at Columbia University, hasn't personally looked at, it would be hard to imagine. This beautifully written book is jaw-droppingly comprehensive, weaving countless telling details into its discussion of all the political, economic and social complexities of the era.
Learn more about The Bloody Shirt: Terror After Appomattox.
--Marshal Zeringue