Reconstruction, Eric Foner
Reconstruction, Eric Foner
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Reconstruction
America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877

Author: Eric Foner

Narrator: Norman Dietz

Unabridged: 30 hr 44 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 12/01/1998

Synopsis

The period following the Civil War was one of the most controversial eras in American history. This comprehensive account of the period captures the drama of those turbulent years that played such an important role in shaping modern America.Eric Foner brilliantly chronicles how Americans, black and white, responded to the unprecedented changes unleashed by the Civil War and the end of slavery. He provides fresh insights on a host of other issues, including,The ways in which the emancipated slave’s quest for economic autonomy and equal citizenship shaped the political agenda of Reconstruction;The remodeling of Southern society and the place of planters, merchants, and small farmers within it;The evolution of racial attitudes and patterns of race relations;Abraham Lincoln’s attitude toward Reconstruction;The role of “carpet-baggers” and “scalawags;” andThe role of violence in the period.This “smart book of enormous strengths” (Boston Globe) has become the classic work on the wrenching post–Civil War period, an era whose legacy reverberates in the United States to this day.

About Eric Foner

Eric Foner is the author of many award-winning books on the Civil War and Reconstruction, including the winner of the Pulitzer Prize for History, The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery. He is the 2020 recipient of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for lifetime achievement. He is DeWitt Clinton Professor Emeritus of History at Columbia University.

About Norman Dietz

Norman Dietz is a writer, voice-over artist, and audiobook narrator. He has won numerous Earphones Awards and was named one of the fifty “Best Voices of the Century” by AudioFile magazine. He and his late wife, Sandra, transformed an abandoned ice-cream parlor into a playhouse, which served “the world’s best hot fudge sundaes” before and after performances. The founder of Theatre in the Works, he lives in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Brett on February 25, 2023

Overall this was a heavy and scholarly narrative about the history of blacks from the Emancipation Proclamation up thought 1877. Eric Foner wrote this from the angle of post-war freedmen and their struggle in social, political, economic and labor, religious, and Constitutional challenges. The narrat......more

Goodreads review by Raymond on February 06, 2022

For the past two years I've been reading more and more about Reconstruction. I started with Gates' Stony the Road: Reconstruction, White Supremacy, and the Rise of Jim Crow, which led to Du Bois' Black Reconstruction in America 1860-1880. After reading Du Bois, I thought I was pretty much done and d......more

Goodreads review by Sherm on July 27, 2013

The further I get into this book, the more I realize that we have virtually no understanding as a culture of one of the most important periods in American history. Typically, we learn that Lincoln freed the slaves, United the Union once again, and we all lived happily ever after. This book fills in......more

Goodreads review by CoachJim on December 22, 2020

The Emancipation Proclamation freed the slaves but not the Negro. - Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution My God this was a depressing book. Sometimes it feels like reading history is just reading about the Nazi’s atrocities of the Jews, the U.S. Cavalry’s massacre of Native Amer......more

Goodreads review by Erik on May 07, 2020

To use words like "masterful" or "thorough" to describe Eric Foner's "Reconstruction" is to give too little credit to what is truly an earth shattering contribution to American historical thought. "Reconstruction" is a landmark historical account of one of the most misunderstood and maligned periods......more

Quotes

“[A] splendid book…a compelling narrative…With this book, Mr. Foner becomes the preeminent historian of Reconstruction.”

“Eric Foner…has written the Reconstruction book for our times. Monumental in scope, ranging over the North as well as the South…a feat of research and synthesis.”

“Long, brilliant, and stylish…[Reconstruction] is of signal importance…the most comprehensive and convincing account of the effort to build a racially democratic and just society from the fiery ruins of slavery.”

“A heroic synthesis that should dominate the field…It gives nearly equal time to all the protagonists in the Reconstruction drama and recognizes how inextricably economic, political, social, and ideological issues are bound.”

“This is history written on a grand scale, a masterful treatment of one of the most complex periods of American history.”

“Reconstruction will certainly be the standard work on the subject for the foreseeable future. And with its publication, Eric Foner has emerged as the preeminent American historian of his generation.”

“This invaluable, definitive history re-creates the post-Civil War period as a pivotal drama in which ordinary people get equal billing with politicians and wheelers and dealers.”

Awards

  • Los Angeles Times Book Prize
  • Parkman Prize
  • Bancroft Prize
  • Pulitzer Prize
  • National Book Award
  • National Book Critics Circle Award
  • PBS Pick
  • New York Times Pick
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