More on Adam Goodheart's new book "1861: The Civil War Awakening"

Adam Goodheart's new book explores the Civil War.

A new book, 1861: The Civil War Awakening,  by Adam Goodheart ’92, recently reviewed in Harvard Magazine, was also the subject of  a searching, favorable review in the New York Times Sunday Book Review. Goodheart's volume, years in the making, explores the origins and beginnings of the war, whose sesquicentennial begins this year and will continue until 2015. "Many good studies about the struggle will be published, but few will be as exhilarating as 1861: The Civil War Awakening,” writes Debby Applegate in the Times. "Like many of the best works of history, 1861 creates the uncanny illusion that the reader has stepped into a time machine." Goodheart, director of the Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience at Washington College, is a former Undergraduate columnist for Harvard Magazine and was one of its original Ledecky Fellows.   

You might also like

America’s Past, Opera's Future: 11 New Books from Harvard Authors

These newly released novels, histories, and memoirs grapple with identity in all its forms.

The Year a Beat Poet Squatted at Harvard

In 1954, Gregory Corso moved into Eliot House. How he stayed there is a literary legend.

How Adam Ehrlich Sachs Writes Absurd and Beautiful Fiction

The Gretel and the Great War author on how the Lampoon derailed his science career—and set him on a literary path.

Most popular

Three Harvard Unions Move Toward Strikes

Dining employees, academic workers unions join graduate students in threatening a walkout.

To Promote Healthy Habits in Patients, Start With the Doctors

Why Harvard Medical School is training physicians to think more like coaches

How Philosophy at Harvard Saved Itself

As humanities shrink across higher education, one department is flourishing. Is its success a fluke, or a roadmap?

Explore More From Current Issue

A man with a long beard and formal attire stands next to a chalkboard with an equation.

Two tales of University greats—and an encounter with a Tiger

Ancient Egyptian painted sarcophagus with detailed hieroglyphs and a woman's face.

A rare Egyptian mummy case is on display at the Harvard Museum of the Ancient Near East.

Delicate green cocoa pods and small white flowers on a tree branch, surrounded by soft greenery.

Harvard researchers investigate climate’s impact on cocoa crops, innovations in nasal vaccines, and links between pain and skull marrow.