Edward L. Ayers

A landmark Civil War history told from a fresh, deeply researched ground-level perspective.

The Civil War and Emancipation in the Heart of America

The Thin Light of Freedom

Ranging from the Georgia coast to the Tennessee mountains, from the power brokers to tenant farmers, Ayers depicts a land of startling contrasts--a time of progess and repression, of new industries and old ways. Finalist for the 1992 Pulitzer Prize. Winner of the Prize for Best Book on American Race Relations. Photos and line drawings.

Life After Reconstruction

The Promise of the New South

The Civil War in the Heart of America, 1859-1863

In the Presence of Mine Enemies

Carolyn R. Martin

"This remarkable publication provides a captivating and brilliantly executed series of conversations among seventeen most impressive historians. These participants in a daylong conference focusing on the extraordinary years leading to the Civil War provide an incredible range of historical information that is both educational and exciting. Here is an opportunity to draw on a lively exchange between a substantial number of knowledgeable and entertaining scholars."—James Oliver Horton, author of Landmarks of African American History

America on the Eve of the Civil War

Edward L. Ayers monumental history, Promise of the New South, was praised by the eminent historian Bertram Wyatt-Brown as "A work of frequently stunning beauty," who added "The elegance and sensitivity that he achieves are typical of few historical works." Winner of the James A. Rawley Prize for Best Book on American Race Relations from the Organization of American Historians, and the Frank Lawrence Owsley and Harriett Chappell Owsley Award from the Southern Historical Association, and finalist for the 1992 National Book Award, the 1992 Pulitzer Prize for History, and the 1993 Southern Book Award, Promise of the New South established Ayers as one of the foremost scholars of the American South. Now, in this newly revised edition, Ayers has distilled this remarkable work to offer an even more readable account of the New South. Ranging from the Georgia coast to the Tennessee mountains, from the power brokers to tenant farmers, Ayers depicts a land of startling contrasts--a time of progress and repression, of new industries and old ways. Ayers takes us from remote Southern towns, revolutionized by the spread of the railroads, to the statehouses where Democratic "Redeemers" swept away the legacy of Reconstruction; from the small farmers, trapped into growing nothing but cotton, to the new industries of Birmingham; from abuse and intimacy in the family to tumultuous public meetings of the prohibitionists. He explores every aspect of society, politics, and the economy, detailing the importance of each in the emerging New South. Here is the local Baptist congregation, the country store, the tobacco-stained second-class railroad car, the rise of Populism: the teeming, nineteenth-century South comes to life in these pages. And central to the entire story is the role of race relations, from alliances and friendships between blacks and whites to the spread of Jim Crow laws and disenfranchisement. Ayers weaves all these details into the contradictory story of the New South, showing how the region developed the patterns it was to follow for the next fifty years. A vivid portrait of a society undergoing the sudden confrontation of the promises, costs, and consequences of modern life, this is an unforgettable account of the New South--a land with one foot in the future and the other in the past.

A History of the American South, 1877-1906

Southern Crossing

At a public picnic in the South in the 1890s, a young man paid five cents for his first chance to hear the revolutionary Edison talking machine. He eagerly listened as the soundman placed the needle down, only to find that through the tubes he held to his ears came the chilling sounds of a lynching. In this story, with its blend of new technology and old hatreds, genteel picnics and mob violence, Edward Ayers captures the history of the South in the years between Reconstruction and the turn of the century. Ranging from the Georgia coast to the Tennessee mountains, from the power brokers to tenant farmers, Ayers depicts a land of startling contrasts. Ayers takes us from remote Southern towns, revolutionized by the spread of the railroads, to the statehouses where Democratic Redeemers swept away the legacy of Reconstruction; from the small farmers, trapped into growing nothing but cotton, to the new industries of Birmingham; from abuse and intimacy in the family to tumultuous public meetings of the prohibitionists. He explores every aspect of society, politics, and the economy, detailing the importance of each in the emerging New South. Central to the entire story is the role of race relations, from alliances and friendships between blacks and whites to the spread of Jim Crows laws and disfranchisement. The teeming nineteenth-century South comes to life in these pages. When this book first appeared in 1992, it won a broad array of prizes and was a finalist for both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. The citation for the National Book Award declared Promise of the New South a vivid and masterfully detailed picture of the evolution of a new society. The Atlantic called it "one of the broadest and most original interpretations of southern history of the past twenty years.

Life After Reconstruction - 15th Anniversary Edition

Andrew J. Torget

Gary W. Gallagher

Crucible of the Civil War offers an illuminating portrait of the state’s wartime economic, political, and social institutions. Weighing in on contentious issues within established scholarship while also breaking ground in areas long neglected by scholars, the contributors examine such concerns as the war’s effect on slavery in the state, the wartime intersection of race and religion, and the development of Confederate social networks. They also shed light on topics long disputed by historians, such as Virginia’s decision to secede from the Union, the development of Confederate nationalism, and how Virginians chose to remember the war after its close.

Virginia from Secession to Commemoration

Crucible of the Civil War

“An extremely good writer, [Ayers] is well worth reading . . . on the South and Southern history.”—Stephen Sears, Boston Globe The Southern past has proven to be fertile ground for great works of history. Peculiarities of tragic proportions—a system of slavery flourishing in a land of freedom, secession and Civil War tearing at a federal Union, deep poverty persisting in a nation of fast-paced development—have fed the imaginations of some of our most accomplished historians. Foremost in their ranks today is Edward L. Ayers, author of the award-winning and ongoing study of the Civil War in the heart of America, the Valley of the Shadow Project. In wide-ranging essays on the Civil War, the New South, and the twentieth-century South, Ayers turns over the rich soil of Southern life to explore the sources of the nation's and his own history. The title essay, original here, distills his vast research and offers a fresh perspective on the nation's central historical event.

What Caused the Civil War?: Reflections on the South and Southern History

Edward L Ayers

Examines the workings of the criminal justice system of the Southern United States and discusses the influence of class and race on the development of Southern crime and justice

Crime and Punishment in the 19th Century American South

Vengeance and Justice

Taking a wide focus, Southern Journey narrates the evolution of southern history from the founding of the nation to the present day by focusing on the settling, unsettling, and resettling of the South. Using migration as the dominant theme of southern history and including indigenous, white, black, and immigrant people in the story, Edward L. Ayers cuts across the usual geographic, thematic, and chronological boundaries that subdivide southern history. Ayers explains the major contours and events of the southern past from a fresh perspective, weaving geography with history in innovative ways. He uses unique color maps created with sophisticated geographic information system (GIS) tools to interpret massive data sets from a humanistic perspective, providing a view of movement within the South with a clarity, detail, and continuity we have not seen before. The South has never stood still; it is—and always has been—changing in deep, radical, sometimes contradictory ways, often in divergent directions. Ayers’s history of migration in the South is a broad yet deep reinterpretation of the region’s past that informs our understanding of the population, economy, politics, and culture of the South today. Southern Journey is not only a pioneering work of history; it is a grand recasting of the South’s past by one of its most renowned and appreciated scholars.

The Migrations of the American South, 1790–2020

Southern Journey

Winner of the Lincoln Prize A landmark Civil War history told from a fresh, deeply researched ground-level perspective. At the crux of America’s history stand two astounding events: the immediate and complete destruction of the most powerful system of slavery in the modern world, followed by a political reconstruction in which new constitutions established the fundamental rights of citizens for formerly enslaved people. Few people living in 1860 would have dared imagine either event, and yet, in retrospect, both seem to have been inevitable. In a beautifully crafted narrative, Edward L. Ayers restores the drama of the unexpected to the history of the Civil War. From the same vantage point occupied by his unforgettable characters, Ayers captures the strategic savvy of Lee and his local lieutenants, and the clear vision of equal rights animating black troops from Pennsylvania. We see the war itself become a scourge to the Valley, its pitched battles punctuating a cycle of vicious attack and reprisal in which armies burned whole towns for retribution. In the weeks and months after emancipation, from the streets of Staunton, Virginia, we see black and white residents testing the limits of freedom as political leaders negotiate the terms of readmission to the Union. With analysis as powerful as its narrative, here is a landmark history of the Civil War.

The Thin Light of Freedom: The Civil War and Emancipation in the Heart of America

The first in a series of annual Signature Conferences sponsored by the Virginia Sesquicentennial of the American Civil War Commission, "America on the Eve of the Civil War" was held in April 2009.

David M. Oshinsky

Lewis L. Gould

Jean R. Soderlund

Written by top scholars of American History, AMERICAN PASSAGES, BRIEF SECOND EDITION examines U.S. history the way people live?in the flow of real time. Rather than pursuing one topic (such as politics, culture, society, reform, the military, or economics) at a time, each chapter of the text interweaves important themes and issues into one clear narrative. Through this method of presentation as well as through the primary source material in every chapter, students can observe the many ways that events, movements, and groups of people have served to shape history and can learn to make connections between these themes and issues. This revision includes expanded review materials and pedagogy to help students get through the course as well as a free AMERICAN PASSAGES Book Companion Website created by Ed Ayers. This site includes chapter-by-chapter quizzing, interactive maps, videos, audio, and links to over 400 readings.

A History of the United States, Volume I: to 1877, Brief

American Passages

Written by top scholars of American History, AMERICAN PASSAGES, BRIEF SECOND EDITION examines U.S. history the way people live--in the flow of real time. Rather than pursuing one topic (such as politics, culture, society, reform, the military, or economics) at a time, each chapter of the text interweaves important themes and issues into one clear narrative. Through this method of presentation as well as through the primary source material in every chapter, students can observe the many ways that events, movements, and groups of people have served to shape history and can learn to make connections between these themes and issues. This revision includes expanded review materials and pedagogy to help students get through the course as well as a free AMERICAN PASSAGES Book Companion Website created by Ed Ayers. This site includes chapter-by-chapter quizzing, interactive maps, videos, audio, and links to over 400 readings.

A History of the United States Since 1865, Compact Edition

Bradley C. Mittendorf

Gathers short stories, journalism, and excerpts from novels, diaries, and memoirs by Southern authors

Testimony, Memory, and Fiction

The Oxford Book of the American South

Exploring the major elements of southern crime and punishment at a time that saw the formation of the fundamental patterns of class and race, Ayers studies the inner workings of the police, prison, and judicial systems, and the nature of crime.

Edward L. Ayers

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