the American civil war
A redemptive fable: Night Watch, by Jayne Anne Phillips, reviewed
Set in the Appalachian Mountains, the novel centres around a family struggling to survive domestic abuse and abandonment in the aftermath of the American civil war
An angry poltergeist: Long Shadows, by Abigail Cutter, reviewed
Long Shadows, a powerful novel set mainly in the American civil war, is very unlike Gone with the Wind. The…
Juneteenth is Trump’s chance to win in November
Of course June 19 should be a federal holiday. It’s not just the right thing to do: it’s also the…
Walt Whitman’s poetry can change your life
To describe a new book as ‘eagerly awaited’ is almost unpardonable. Yet Mark Doty’s What is the Grass: Walt Whitman…
Are we now in a Fourth Turning Crisis?
Back in 1997, William Strauss and Neil Howe released The Fourth Turning: An American Prophecy that articulated a roughly 80-year…
The radical history of The Spectator
A newspaper – it would be more than 100 years before it became a magazine – calling itself a spectator…
Lessons from the Johnson impeachment
The first time Congress impeached a president was in 1868. The president was Andrew Johnson, a man almost as surprising…
American breakup: secession is much closer than we think
The United States is ripe for secession. Across the world, established states have divided in two or are staring down…
A Shout in the Ruins, by Kevin Powers, reviewed
We’re in Virginia, in the 1850s. A girl called Emily is tormenting her dog, Champion, and her father’s teenage slave,…
It’s time to rehabilitate Ulysses S. Grant — scorned hero of the Civil War
Last year, more than 6,000,000 people visited the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC. By contrast, barely 80,000 went to General…
The 1850s: a dizzying decade of boom and bust
We can all identify decades in which the world moved forward. Wars are not entirely negative experiences: the social and…
From ambrosia to zabaglione — now with added slavery
This Oxford Companion ranges from the sweet to the decidedly salty, while being the most politically correct reference book you will ever consult, says Paul Levy
The turbulent reign of King Cotton: the dark history of one of the world’s most important commodities
If not for cotton, we would still be wearing wool. To equal current cotton production, we would need seven billion…
