NOTE: This edition is outdated. Please see the updated third edition.
New to the Second Edition
To keep up with current scholarship on the Civil War and Reconstruction periods, new or revised material has been incorporated throughout The American War on the following topics:
- Chapter 1: The Corwin Amendment.
- Chapter 3: Background and importance of the Trans-Mississippi theater in the war’s early stages; overview of conflicts with Native Americans between 1861 and 1865.
- Chapter 4: Dix-Hill cartel of 1862; policies and practices of military occupation during and after the war.
- Chapter 6: The war’s impact on human, animal, and environmental resources and dislocation.
- Chapter 12: Recent clashes over the appropriateness of public Confederate memorials.
- Further reading: Two dozen titles that combine accessibility and sound scholarship.
In The American War: A History of the Civil War Era, renowned historians Gary W. Gallagher and Joan Waugh provide a fresh examination of the Civil War, the great defining moment in U.S. history, as well as its aftermath and enduring memory, in a masterful work that prize-winning historian William C. Davis calls “easily the best one-volume assessment of the Civil War to date.” By investigating this crucial period of U.S. history through the eyes of civilians, celebrated leaders, and citizen soldiers alike, students and curious readers alike can gain a profound understanding of the dramatic political and military events and personalities as well as social and economic processes that caused the Civil War, enabled the Union to prevail over the Confederacy, and forever transformed the United States.
Here’s what other historians are saying about The American War:
“The authors have written a succinct yet detailed and eloquent history of the conflict that preserved and reshaped the nation in ways that continue to affect us today. Noteworthy features of The American War are the inclusion of Reconstruction as an integral part of the war, as indeed it was, and a final chapter on the conflicting memories of the war by those who experienced it as they attempted to give meaning to their experiences.”
— James M. McPherson, author of Battle Cry of Freedom
“No other recent work has so mastered the content and contributions of the best historians of our time, and distilled it into a work that is at once comprehensive and yet manageable. In their graceful words, Gallagher and Waugh offer the full context of the war’s coming, its course at home and in the field, and its consequences, both as it happened and as Americans chose to remember it. This is easily the best one-volume assessment of the Civil War era to date.”
— William C. Davis, author of Crucible of Command: Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee—The War They Fought, the Peace They Forged
“Gallagher and Waugh do a wonderful job of explaining the main facts that shaped the war years and their aftermath. The authors manage to do justice to individual experiences and national goals in both the Union and the Confederacy, consider military strategies and battlefield tactics throughout the entire geographic landscape, and contemplate the war through the eyes of celebrated leaders, anonymous citizen soldiers, and a diversity of civilians – both white and black.”
— Matthew Gallman, author of Defining Duty in the Civil War: Personal Choice, Popular Culture, and the Union Home Front
“It is hard to see how any one brief volume could better deal with this vast subject. Gallagher and Waugh know all there is to know about the Civil War and manage to convey that knowledge with balanced judgment, engaging quotations, up-to-date scholarship, and humane insight.”
— Edward L. Ayers, author of In the Presence of Mine Enemies: Civil War in the Heart of America
