The Calculus of Violence

Download The Calculus of Violence PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 067491631X
Total Pages : 481 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (749 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis The Calculus of Violence by : Aaron Sheehan-Dean

Download or read book The Calculus of Violence written by Aaron Sheehan-Dean and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2018-11-05 with total page 481 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the Jefferson Davis Award Winner of the Johns Family Book Award Winner of the Army Historical Foundation Distinguished Writing Award “A work of deep intellectual seriousness, sweeping and yet also delicately measured, this book promises to resolve longstanding debates about the nature of the Civil War.” —Gregory P. Downs, author of After Appomattox Shiloh, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg—tens of thousands of soldiers died on these iconic Civil War battlefields, and throughout the South civilians suffered terrible cruelty. At least three-quarters of a million lives were lost during the American Civil War. Given its seemingly indiscriminate mass destruction, this conflict is often thought of as the first “total war.” But Aaron Sheehan-Dean argues for another interpretation. The Calculus of Violence demonstrates that this notoriously bloody war could have been much worse. Military forces on both sides sought to contain casualties inflicted on soldiers and civilians. In Congress, in church pews, and in letters home, Americans debated the conditions under which lethal violence was legitimate, and their arguments differentiated carefully among victims—women and men, black and white, enslaved and free. Sometimes, as Sheehan-Dean shows, these well-meaning restraints led to more carnage by implicitly justifying the killing of people who were not protected by the laws of war. As the Civil War raged on, the Union’s confrontations with guerrillas and the Confederacy’s confrontations with black soldiers forced a new reckoning with traditional categories of lawful combatants and raised legal disputes that still hang over military operations around the world today. In examining the agonizing debates about the meaning of a just war in the Civil War era, Sheehan-Dean discards conventional abstractions—total, soft, limited—as too tidy to contain what actually happened on the ground.

After Appomattox

Download After Appomattox PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 0674241622
Total Pages : 353 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (742 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis After Appomattox by : Gregory P. Downs

Download or read book After Appomattox written by Gregory P. Downs and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2019-08-13 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Original and revelatory.” —David Blight, author of Frederick Douglass Avery O. Craven Award Finalist A Civil War Memory/Civil War Monitor Best Book of the Year In April 1865, Robert E. Lee wrote to Ulysses S. Grant asking for peace. Peace was beyond his authority to negotiate, Grant replied, but surrender terms he would discuss. The distinction proved prophetic. After Appomattox reveals that the Civil War did not end with Confederate capitulation in 1865. Instead, a second phase of the war began which lasted until 1871—not the project euphemistically called Reconstruction, but a state of genuine belligerence whose mission was to shape the peace. Using its war powers, the U.S. Army oversaw an ambitious occupation, stationing tens of thousands of troops in outposts across the defeated South. This groundbreaking history shows that the purpose of the occupation was to crush slavery in the face of fierce and violent resistance, but there were limits to its effectiveness: the occupying army never really managed to remake the South. “The United States Army has been far too neglected as a player—a force—in the history of Reconstruction... Downs wants his work to speak to the present, and indeed it should.” —David W. Blight, The Atlantic “Striking... Downs chronicles...a military occupation that was indispensable to the uprooting of slavery.” —Boston Globe “Downs makes the case that the final end to slavery, and the establishment of basic civil and voting rights for all Americans, was ‘born in the face of bayonets.’ ...A remarkable, necessary book.” —Slate

Rising Up and Rising Down: pt. II. Studies in consequences (1991-2003). Southeast Asia (1991-2000). Introduction ; The skulls on the shelves (Cambodia) ; The last generation (Cambodian America) ; Kickin' it (Cambodian America) ; I'm especially interested in young girls (Thailand) ; But what do we do? (Burma) ; Yakuza lives (Japan) ; Europe (1992, 1994, 1998). Introduction ; Where are all the pretty girls? (Ex-Yugoslavia) ; The war never came here (ex-Yugoslavia) ; The avengers of Kosovo (Yugoslavia) ; Africa (1993, 2001). Introduction ; The jealous ones (Madagascar) ; Special tax (Republic of Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo)

Download Rising Up and Rising Down: pt. II. Studies in consequences (1991-2003). Southeast Asia (1991-2000). Introduction ; The skulls on the shelves (Cambodia) ; The last generation (Cambodian America) ; Kickin' it (Cambodian America) ; I'm especially interested in young girls (Thailand) ; But what do we do? (Burma) ; Yakuza lives (Japan) ; Europe (1992, 1994, 1998). Introduction ; Where are all the pretty girls? (Ex-Yugoslavia) ; The war never came here (ex-Yugoslavia) ; The avengers of Kosovo (Yugoslavia) ; Africa (1993, 2001). Introduction ; The jealous ones (Madagascar) ; Special tax (Republic of Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo) PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 626 pages
Book Rating : 4.F/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Rising Up and Rising Down: pt. II. Studies in consequences (1991-2003). Southeast Asia (1991-2000). Introduction ; The skulls on the shelves (Cambodia) ; The last generation (Cambodian America) ; Kickin' it (Cambodian America) ; I'm especially interested in young girls (Thailand) ; But what do we do? (Burma) ; Yakuza lives (Japan) ; Europe (1992, 1994, 1998). Introduction ; Where are all the pretty girls? (Ex-Yugoslavia) ; The war never came here (ex-Yugoslavia) ; The avengers of Kosovo (Yugoslavia) ; Africa (1993, 2001). Introduction ; The jealous ones (Madagascar) ; Special tax (Republic of Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo) by : William T Vollmann

Download or read book Rising Up and Rising Down: pt. II. Studies in consequences (1991-2003). Southeast Asia (1991-2000). Introduction ; The skulls on the shelves (Cambodia) ; The last generation (Cambodian America) ; Kickin' it (Cambodian America) ; I'm especially interested in young girls (Thailand) ; But what do we do? (Burma) ; Yakuza lives (Japan) ; Europe (1992, 1994, 1998). Introduction ; Where are all the pretty girls? (Ex-Yugoslavia) ; The war never came here (ex-Yugoslavia) ; The avengers of Kosovo (Yugoslavia) ; Africa (1993, 2001). Introduction ; The jealous ones (Madagascar) ; Special tax (Republic of Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo) written by William T Vollmann and published by . This book was released on 2003 with total page 626 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

The Record of Murders and Outrages

Download The Record of Murders and Outrages PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : UNC Press Books
ISBN 13 : 1469663465
Total Pages : 182 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (696 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis The Record of Murders and Outrages by : William A. Blair

Download or read book The Record of Murders and Outrages written by William A. Blair and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2021-09-13 with total page 182 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After the Civil War's end, reports surged of violence by Southern whites against Union troops and Black men, women, and children. While some in Washington, D.C., sought to downplay the growing evidence of atrocities, in September 1866, Freedmen's Bureau commissioner O. O. Howard requested that assistant commissioners in the readmitted states compile reports of "murders and outrages" to catalog the extent of violence, to prove that the reports of a peaceful South were wrong, and to argue in Congress for the necessity of martial law. What ensued was one of the most fascinating and least understood fights of the Reconstruction era—a political and analytical fight over information and its validity, with implications that dealt in life and death. Here William A. Blair takes the full measure of the bureau's attempt to document and deploy hard information about the reality of the violence that Black communities endured in the wake of Emancipation. Blair uses the accounts of far-flung Freedmen's Bureau agents to ask questions about the early days of Reconstruction, which are surprisingly resonant with the present day: How do you prove something happened in a highly partisan atmosphere where the credibility of information is constantly challenged? And what form should that information take to be considered as fact?

The Calculus of Violence

Download The Calculus of Violence PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9780674916302
Total Pages : pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (163 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis The Calculus of Violence by : Aaron Charles Sheehan-Dean

Download or read book The Calculus of Violence written by Aaron Charles Sheehan-Dean and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Discarding tidy abstractions about the conduct of war, Aaron Sheehan-Dean shows that the notoriously bloody US Civil War could have been much worse. Despite agonizing debates over Just War and careful differentiation among victims, Americans could not avoid living with the contradictions inherent in a conflict that was both violent and restrained.--

The Calculus of Violence

Download The Calculus of Violence PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 0674984226
Total Pages : 481 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (749 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis The Calculus of Violence by : Aaron Sheehan-Dean

Download or read book The Calculus of Violence written by Aaron Sheehan-Dean and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2018-11-05 with total page 481 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the Jefferson Davis Award Winner of the Johns Family Book Award Winner of the Army Historical Foundation Distinguished Writing Award “A work of deep intellectual seriousness, sweeping and yet also delicately measured, this book promises to resolve longstanding debates about the nature of the Civil War.” —Gregory P. Downs, author of After Appomattox Shiloh, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg—tens of thousands of soldiers died on these iconic Civil War battlefields, and throughout the South civilians suffered terrible cruelty. At least three-quarters of a million lives were lost during the American Civil War. Given its seemingly indiscriminate mass destruction, this conflict is often thought of as the first “total war.” But Aaron Sheehan-Dean argues for another interpretation. The Calculus of Violence demonstrates that this notoriously bloody war could have been much worse. Military forces on both sides sought to contain casualties inflicted on soldiers and civilians. In Congress, in church pews, and in letters home, Americans debated the conditions under which lethal violence was legitimate, and their arguments differentiated carefully among victims—women and men, black and white, enslaved and free. Sometimes, as Sheehan-Dean shows, these well-meaning restraints led to more carnage by implicitly justifying the killing of people who were not protected by the laws of war. As the Civil War raged on, the Union’s confrontations with guerrillas and the Confederacy’s confrontations with black soldiers forced a new reckoning with traditional categories of lawful combatants and raised legal disputes that still hang over military operations around the world today. In examining the agonizing debates about the meaning of a just war in the Civil War era, Sheehan-Dean discards conventional abstractions—total, soft, limited—as too tidy to contain what actually happened on the ground.

I Remain Yours

Download I Remain Yours PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 0674981812
Total Pages : 190 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (749 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis I Remain Yours by : Christopher Hager

Download or read book I Remain Yours written by Christopher Hager and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2018-01-08 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When North and South went to war, millions of American families endured their first long separation. For men in the armies—and their wives, children, parents, and siblings at home—letter writing was the sole means to communicate. Yet for many of these Union and Confederate families, taking pen to paper was a new and daunting task. I Remain Yours narrates the Civil War from the perspective of ordinary people who had to figure out how to salve the emotional strain of war and sustain their closest relationships using only the written word. Christopher Hager presents an intimate history of the Civil War through the interlaced stories of common soldiers and their families. The previously overlooked words of a carpenter from Indiana, an illiterate teenager from Connecticut, a grieving mother in the mountains of North Carolina, and a blacksmith’s daughter on the Iowa prairie reveal through their awkward script and expression the personal toll of war. Is my son alive or dead? Returning soon or never? Can I find words for the horrors I’ve seen or the loneliness I feel? Fear, loss, and upheaval stalked the lives of Americans straining to connect the battlefront to those they left behind. Hager shows how relatively uneducated men and women made this new means of communication their own, turning writing into an essential medium for sustaining relationships and a sense of belonging. Letter writing changed them and they in turn transformed the culture of letters into a popular, democratic mode of communication.

The Deadly Ethnic Riot

Download The Deadly Ethnic Riot PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Univ of California Press
ISBN 13 : 0520342054
Total Pages : 608 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (23 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis The Deadly Ethnic Riot by : Donald L. Horowitz

Download or read book The Deadly Ethnic Riot written by Donald L. Horowitz and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2023-11-10 with total page 608 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Donald L. Horowitz's comprehensive consideration of the structure and dynamics of ethnic violence is the first full-scale, comparative study of what the author terms the deadly ethnic riot—an intense, sudden, lethal attack by civilian members of one ethnic group on civilian members of another ethnic group. Serious, frequent, and destabilizing, these events result in large numbers of casualties. Horowitz examines approximately 150 such riots in about fifty countries, mainly in Asia, Africa, and the former Soviet Union, as well as fifty control cases. With its deep and thorough scholarship, incisive analysis, and profound insights, The Deadly Ethnic Riot will become the definitive work on its subject. Furious and sadistic, the riot is nevertheless directed against a precisely specified class of targets and conducted with considerable circumspection. Horowitz scrutinizes target choices, participants and organization, the timing and supporting conditions for the violence, the nature of the events that precede the riot, the prevalence of atrocities during the violence, the location and diffusion of riots, and the aims and effects of riot behavior. He finds that the deadly ethnic riot is a highly patterned but emotional event that tends to occur during times of political uncertainty. He also discusses the crucial role of rumor in triggering riots, the surprisingly limited role of deliberate organization, and the striking lack of remorse exhibited by participants. Horowitz writes clearly and eloquently without compromising the complexity of his subject. With impressive analytical skill, he takes up the important challenge of explaining phenomena that are at once passionate and calculative.

The Cruel Radiance

Download The Cruel Radiance PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 0226482510
Total Pages : 341 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (264 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis The Cruel Radiance by : Susie Linfield

Download or read book The Cruel Radiance written by Susie Linfield and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2012-04-15 with total page 341 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Susie Linfield addresses the issue of whether photographs depicting past scenes of violence & cruelty are voyeuristic, arguing that if we do not look & understand that we are seeing at people, rather than depersonalised acts of inhumanity, our hopes of curbing political violence today are probably limited.

The Great Heart of the Republic

Download The Great Heart of the Republic PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 0674052889
Total Pages : 353 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (74 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis The Great Heart of the Republic by : Adam Arenson

Download or read book The Great Heart of the Republic written by Adam Arenson and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2011-01-03 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the battles to determine the destiny of the United States in the middle decades of the nineteenth century, St. Louis, then at the hinge between North, South, and West, was ideally placed to bring these sections together. At least, this was the hope of a coterie of influential St. Louisans. But their visions of re-orienting the nation's politics with Westerners at the top and St. Louis as a cultural, commercial, and national capital crashed as the country was tom apart by convulsions over slavery, emancipation, and Manifest Destiny. While standard accounts frame the coming of the Civil War as strictly a conflict between the North and the South who were competing to expand their way of life, Arenson shifts the focus to the distinctive culture and politics of the American West, recovering the region’s importance for understanding the Civil War and examining the vision of western advocates themselves, and the importance of their distinct agenda for shaping the political, economic, and cultural future of the nation.

Infinite Powers

Download Infinite Powers PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Mariner Books
ISBN 13 : 1328879984
Total Pages : 389 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (288 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Infinite Powers by : Steven Strogatz

Download or read book Infinite Powers written by Steven Strogatz and published by Mariner Books. This book was released on 2019 with total page 389 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the captivating story of mathematics' greatest ever idea: calculus. Without it, there would be no computers, no microwave ovens, no GPS, and no space travel. But before it gave modern man almost infinite powers, calculus was behind centuries of controversy, competition, and even death. Taking us on a thrilling journey through three millennia, professor Steven Strogatz charts the development of this seminal achievement from the days of Aristotle to today's million-dollar reward that awaits whoever cracks Reimann's hypothesis. Filled with idiosyncratic characters from Pythagoras to Euler, Infinite Powers is a compelling human drama that reveals the legacy of calculus on nearly every aspect of modern civilization, including science, politics, ethics, philosophy, and much besides.

Histories of Violence

Download Histories of Violence PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1783602406
Total Pages : 256 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (836 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Histories of Violence by : Brad Evans

Download or read book Histories of Violence written by Brad Evans and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2017-01-15 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While there is a tacit appreciation that freedom from violence will lead to more prosperous relations among peoples, violence continues to be deployed for various political and social ends. Yet the problem of violence still defies neat description, subject to many competing interpretations. Histories of Violence offers an accessible yet compelling examination of the problem of violence as it appears in the corpus of canonical figures – from Hannah Arendt to Frantz Fanon, Michel Foucault to Slavoj Žižek – who continue to influence and inform contemporary political, philosophical, sociological, cultural, and anthropological study. Written by a team of internationally renowned experts, this is an essential interrogation of post-war critical thought as it relates to violence.

On War

Download On War PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 388 pages
Book Rating : 4.F/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis On War by : Carl von Clausewitz

Download or read book On War written by Carl von Clausewitz and published by . This book was released on 1908 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Reckoning with Rebellion

Download Reckoning with Rebellion PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9780813066424
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (664 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Reckoning with Rebellion by : Aaron Sheehan-Dean

Download or read book Reckoning with Rebellion written by Aaron Sheehan-Dean and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An innovative global history of the American Civil War, Reckoning with Rebellion compares and contrasts the American experience with other civil and national conflicts that happened at nearly the same time--the Indian Rebellion of 1857, the Polish Insurrection of 1863, and China's Taiping Rebellion. Aaron Sheehan-Dean identifies surprising new connections between these historical moments across three continents. Sheehan-Dean shows that insurgents around the globe often relied on irregular warfare and were labeled as criminals, mutineers, or rebels by the dominant powers. He traces commonalities between the United States, British, Russian, and Chinese empires, all large and ambitious states willing to use violence to maintain their authority. These powers were also able to control how these conflicts were described, affecting the way foreigners perceived them and whether they decided to intercede. While the stories of these conflicts are now told separately, Sheehan-Dean argues, the participants understood them in relation to each other. When Union officials condemned secession, they pointed to the violence unleashed by the Indian Rebellion. When Confederates denounced Abraham Lincoln as a tyrant, they did so by comparing him to Tsar Alexander II. Sheehan-Dean demonstrates that the causes and issues of the Civil War were also global problems, revealing the important paradigms at work in the age of nineteenth-century nation-building. A volume in the series Frontiers of the American South, edited by William A. Link

Near Andersonville

Download Near Andersonville PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780674053205
Total Pages : 168 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (532 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Near Andersonville by : Peter H. Wood

Download or read book Near Andersonville written by Peter H. Wood and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2010-11-15 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The picture in the attic -- Behind enemy lines -- The woman in the sunlight.

In the Wake of War

Download In the Wake of War PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : LSU Press
ISBN 13 : 0807167088
Total Pages : 423 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (71 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis In the Wake of War by : Andrew F. Lang

Download or read book In the Wake of War written by Andrew F. Lang and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 2017-12-18 with total page 423 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Civil War era marked the dawn of American wars of military occupation, inaugurating a tradition that persisted through the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and that continues to the present. In the Wake of War traces how volunteer and even professional soldiers found themselves tasked with the unprecedented project of wartime and peacetime military occupation, initiating a national debate about the changing nature of American military practice that continued into Reconstruction. In the Mexican-American War and the Civil War, citizen-soldiers confronted the complicated challenges of invading, occupying, and subduing hostile peoples and nations. Drawing on firsthand accounts from soldiers in United States occupation forces, Andrew F. Lang shows that many white volunteers equated their martial responsibilities with those of standing armies, which were viewed as corrupting institutions hostile to the republican military ethos. With the advent of emancipation came the enlistment of African American troops into Union armies, facilitating an extraordinary change in how provisional soldiers interpreted military occupation. Black soldiers, many of whom had been formerly enslaved, garrisoned regions defeated by Union armies and embraced occupation as a tool for destabilizing the South’s long-standing racial hierarchy. Ultimately, Lang argues, traditional fears about the army’s role in peacetime society, grounded in suspicions of standing military forces and heated by a growing ambivalence about racial equality, governed the trials of Reconstruction. Focusing on how U.S. soldiers—white and black, volunteer and regular—enacted and critiqued their unprecedented duties behind the lines during the Civil War era, In the Wake of War reveals the dynamic, often problematic conditions of military occupation.

Redeeming the Great Emancipator

Download Redeeming the Great Emancipator PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 0674915046
Total Pages : 208 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (749 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Redeeming the Great Emancipator by : Allen C. Guelzo

Download or read book Redeeming the Great Emancipator written by Allen C. Guelzo and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2016-02-12 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The larger-than-life image Abraham Lincoln projects across the screen of American history owes much to his role as the Great Emancipator during the Civil War. Yet this noble aspect of Lincoln’s identity is precisely the dimension that some historians have cast into doubt. In a vigorous defense of America’s sixteenth president, award-winning historian and Lincoln scholar Allen Guelzo refutes accusations of Lincoln’s racism and political opportunism, while candidly probing the follies of contemporary cynicism and the constraints of today’s unexamined faith in the liberating powers of individual autonomy. Redeeming the Great Emancipator enumerates Lincoln’s anti-slavery credentials, showing that a deeply held belief in the God-given rights of all people steeled the president in his commitment to emancipation and his hope for racial reconciliation. Emancipation did not achieve complete freedom for American slaves, nor was Lincoln entirely above some of the racial prejudices of his time. Nevertheless, his conscience and moral convictions far outweighed political calculations in ultimately securing freedom for black Americans. Guelzo clarifies the historical record concerning what the Emancipation Proclamation did and did not accomplish. As a policy it was imperfect, but it was far from ineffectual, as some accounts of African American self-emancipation imply. To achieve liberation required interdependence across barriers of race and status. If we fail to recognize our debt to the sacrifices and ingenuity of all the brave men and women of the past, Guelzo says, then we deny a precious part of the American and, indeed, the human community.