Imprint Friday: Remembering the U.S. Civil War

Welcome to Imprint Friday and today's featured imprint: Harper Perennial. Stop by each week to be introduced to a must-read title from one of my favorite imprints. I know you'll be adding many of these books to your wish list.

This week I'm going to do something a little bit different. As many of you know, 2011 marks the 150 anniversary of the start of the American Civil War. In recognition of this, Harper Perennial and its sister imprints at HarperCollins are publishing several new titles on the war and are reissuing some books that were published previously. This Imprint Friday is all about the American Civil War in books at Harper Perennial.

First up is Howard Zinn's The Other Civil War: Slavery and Struggle in Civil War America. This compilation "of essays recounts the history of American labor, free and not free, in the years leading up to and during the Civil War. [Zinn] offers an alternative yet necessary account of that terrible nation-defining epoch."

The pieces in The Other Civil War were originally published in Zinn's best-selling A People's History of the United States, which is available as an audiobook. (ISBN: 9780062079008)

Paul Johnson's Civil War America: 1850-1870 is another compilation drawn from a larger work, this time Johnson's A History of the American People. (ISBN: 9780062076250) Here's part of the publisher's summary:

Enlivened with the author's trademark scholarship, verve, and intelligence, this vivid, concise history revisits the conflict that tore a nation asunder and provides portraits of the people who played essential roles in the bloody drama. [It] examines the factors that led to the devastating rift in the years before the fighting—and recounts the troubled healing a wounded nation underwent in the years after the final shot was fired.

For lighter but fact-filled look at the war, you might want to try Bill Fawcett's How to Lose the Civil War: Military Mistakes of the War Between the States. Fawcett exposes the errors and blunders made by both North and South, from Lincoln's inability to find a general who would engage the enemy to Lee's ordering of Pickett's charge.

Through Fawcett, we learn that the heroes and respected leaders of the American Civil War were far from infallible. (ISBN: 9780061807275)

On sale this week is an updated edition of Emory M. Thomas's Confederate Nation: 1861-1865. This study, now with a new introduction, is considered one of the best examinations of the South during the Civil War years. (ISBN: 9780062061027) According to the publisher's summary,

Thomas's masterful account delivers a clear analysis of the origins of secession, a gripping narrative of the military campaigns that shaped the Civil War, and a compelling portrait of the Southern people during the country's most turbulent era.

For biography fans and those particularly interested in Lincoln, Harper Perennial is reissuing two works by Stephen B. Oates: With Malice Toward None: A Biography of Abraham Lincoln and Abraham Lincoln: The Man behind the Myths. Together, these biographies offer the definitive picture of our sixteenth president from his humble beginnings to his rise to the White House and from his personal life to his struggles to keep the nation whole.

The publisher notes that in the "award-winning" With Malice Toward None, "Lincoln steps forward out of the shadow of myth as a recognizable, fully drawn American whose remarkable life continues to inspire and inform us today." (ISBN: 9780060924713)

In Abraham Lincoln (ISBN: 9780060924720), Oates

exposes the human side of the great and tragic president—including his depression, his difficulties with love, and his troubled and troubling attitudes about slavery—while also confronting the many legends that have arisen around "Honest Abe." Oates throughout raises timely questions about what the Lincoln mythos reveals about the American people.

Other titles coming out this month are

• A Short History of the Civil War by James Stokesbury (ISBN: 9780062064783)
  
• Don't Know Much About the Civil War by Kenneth C. Davis (ISBN: 9780380719082)
  
• Impending Crisis by David M. Potter (ISBN: 9780061319297)
  

Harper Perennial's remembrance of the American Civil War offers something for everyone, from the history buff and to the biography fan. Readers who are participating in the War through the Generations: Civil War Challenge will surely find something of interest here. And for readers outside the United States and for those who don't really remember their history classes, here's your chance to learn about one of the pivotal events in U.S. history.

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Harper Perennial is a featured imprint on Beth Fish Reads. For information about the imprint, please read Erica Barmash's welcome note posted here on June 18, 2010. I encourage you to add your reviews of Harper Perennial books to the review link-up page; it's a great way to discover Good Books for Cool People. And don't miss the The Olive Reader, the Harper Perennial blog.