A People's History of the Civil War
Struggles for the Meaning of Freedom

David Williams' A People's History of the Civil War is, as the title suggests, a Howard Zinn-inspired revisionist look at the War Between the States. Williams' book has its interesting points: he devotes a great deal of time to the horrors of slavery, the exploitation of workers, draft resistance bo......more

Extremely detailed history of the civil war from the point of view of ordinary white workers and farmers north and south, African-American slaves, and American Indians. A very doleful history...a history of bad faith, corruption, murder, and resistance by ordinary people. I had not previously been a......more

I have to be honest - I picked up and put down this book several times before I decided to read it. It is a tome! Four Hundred and Ninety-Eight pages of dense text, Forty-Four pages of notes, and a Twenty-Two page bibliography. It is well worth every single page! The last American History class I rem......more

Although this book is largely written from an uncritically Marxist perspective in which "power elites" are vicious creatures with profit as their only motive and "good old plain folks" are plucky victims of the Man, it is very informative about the extent of corruption and cynicism on both sides dur......more

"A People's History of the Civil War" is a provocative book. David Williams examines the period from the perspective of the "common folk" -- soldiers, women, blacks (on both sides of the conflict). This book offers a highly detailed view of how everyday people struggled with the war and the changes......more