Top 10 Civil War Bestsellers of 2020

Jim Klag

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The Top Ten Bestselling books on the Civil War over the last year are:
I would like to read the book about Miller's cornfield at Antietam and Union: The Struggle to Forge the Story of United States Nationhood. Both look interesting.
 

jgoodguy

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jgoodguy

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This is interesting especially to query our lost causes about.
The Number 1 book was Brad Meltzer and Josh Mensch’s new book The Lincoln Conspiracy: The Secret Plot to Kill America’s 16th President-and Why It Failed. You may ask yourself: “It failed? So why do people visit Ford’s Theater?” This book is not about THAT assassination plot. It is about the 1861 Baltimore Plot. I have not read the book yet, but it has garnered generally good reviews. Here is how the Washington Post described the book:​
Drawing from contemporaneous accounts and biographies of the central characters, Meltzer and Mensch use Lincoln’s two-week journey by train from his home in Illinois to his under-cover-of-darkness arrival in Washington as a gripping narrative to revisit the discovery of the assassination plot and the frantic efforts to prevent its success.
In their briskly paced telling — each of the book’s 81 chapters is just a few pages long — the authors provide a robust historical framework and explain how a figure named Cypriano Ferrandini, a barber to Baltimore’s elite and a staunch supporter of the slaveholding South, would come to be seen as the lead organizer of this murderous plot. While Lincoln is waving to whistle-stop well-wishers in the North, Pinkerton and his detectives operate undercover in proslavery Baltimore and join secret Confederate societies to learn more about the threat.
Also an underappreciated story IMHO.
Number 6 is Union: The Struggle to Forge the Story of United States Nationhood by Colin Woodard. David Blight reviewed the book in the Washington Post, writing:​
 

5fish

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It seems the "Lost Cause " will never die...

Look number 5 book...

It Wasn’t About Slavery: Exposing the Great Lie of the Civil War by Samuel Mitchum is Number 5 (and Number 1 of the Crazytown Bestsellers). As the title indicates, this book denies that slavery was the central cause of the war. Unfortunately, anyone familiar with the basic documents of the Confederacy, like the Declarations of Causes issued by the seceding states, knows that Southern whites started the war in order to preserve slavery and expand its reach into the West. Here are the first two lines from the Georgia Secession Declaration: “The people of Georgia having dissolved their political connection with the Government of the United States of America, present to their confederates and the world the causes which have led to the separation. For the last ten years we have had numerous and serious causes of complaint against our non-slave-holding confederate States with reference to the subject of African slavery.”

Look number 7 book....

Next is The Problem With Lincoln by Thomas DiLorenzo. The author is held in low repute by historians, yet his books against Lincoln are heavily promoted by far-right outfits with ties to, wait for it, the modern Republican Party. Here is what the Claremont Review says about this book:

Look number 9 book...

Number 9 is What Really Happened: The Lincoln Assassination by Robert Hutchinson. Although this book has received no reviews from reputable sources that I could find, it is still a “Civil War Bestseller.” Why? Most likely because it comes from Regnery Press. Regnery specializes in books for the fringe Right Wing from authors like “Diamond and Silk,” as well as hate screeds by the likes of Michelle Malkin, the “Godmother of the Alt-Right.” It Wasn’t About Slavery and Thomas DiLorenzo’s anti-Lincoln diatribe are also from this disreputable purveyor of bad history. Regnery uses its channels through the Alt-Right to market its products to those looking for confirmation of their worldview. Whether this book on the assassination follows that pattern, I do not know. If anyone has read it and thinks it is worthwhile, post a comment. The author has written a couple of books for more reputable publishers and so perhaps this is better than Regnery
 
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