Ratings5
Average rating4.8
With a New Introduction From the "preeminent historian of Reconstruction" (New York Times Book Review), a newly updated edition of the prizewinning classic work on the post-Civil War period that shaped modern America Eric Foner's "masterful treatment of one of the most complex periods of American history" (New Republic) redefined how the post–Civil War period was viewed. Reconstruction chronicles the way in which Americans—black and white—responded to the unprecedented changes unleashed by the war and the end of slavery. It addresses the quest of emancipated slaves searching for economic autonomy and equal citizenship, and describes the remodeling of Southern society, the evolution of racial attitudes and patterns of race relations, and the emergence of a national state possessing vastly expanded authority and committed, for a time, to the principle of equal rights for all Americans. This "smart book of enormous strengths" (Boston Globe) remains the standard work on the wrenching post–Civil War period—an era whose legacy still reverberates in the United States today.
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1 released bookThe New American Nation Series is a 7-book series first released in 1963 with contributions by Phillip Shaw Paludan, William E. Leuchtenburg, and 3 others.
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One of the great classics of American History and absolutely masterful work that totally reshaped my understanding of American history, of political, class, and racial relations, and of American political economy. Foner centers Reconstruction as the great failed moment of American history, a central focal point, a second American Revolution, a time when almost anything was possible, and he demonstrates how it all came tumbling down.