What Caused the Civil War?
Reflections on the South and Southern History
"Ayers's call to revive a "tradition of skepticism" in Civil War scholarship is valuable and challenging." —David W. Blight, writing in the Washington Post
“An extremely good writer, [Ayers] is well worth reading...on the South and Southern history.” ―Stephen Sears, writing in the Boston Globe
"Ayers offers a unique collection of deeply compelling and at times deeply personal essays..." —Publishers Weekly
The Southern past has proven to be fertile ground for great works of history. Peculiarities of tragic proportions―a system of slavery flourishing in a land of freedom, secession and Civil War tearing at a federal Union, deep poverty persisting in a nation of fast-paced development―have fed the imaginations of some of our most accomplished historians.
Foremost in their ranks is Edward Ayers, author of the award-winning and ongoing study of the Civil War in the heart of America, the Valley of the Shadow Project. In wide-ranging essays on the Civil War, the New South, and the twentieth-century South, Ayers turns over the rich soil of Southern life to explore the sources of the nation's and his own history. The title essay, original here, distills his vast research and offers a fresh perspective on the nation's central historical event.