LSU Press publishes the works of a host of talented scholars and poets. Each month, we take a moment to recognize the impact these authors and their works are having on communities nearby and around the world.
Mark R. Folse reviewed The American South and the Great War, 1914–1924, edited by Matthew L. Downs and M. Ryan Floyd, for the North Carolina Historical Review. Folse calls the collection “a welcome addition to the growing scholarship that explores the South during the Great War.” Read the entire review in the July issue of the North Carolina Historical Review.
Civil War studies network H-Civ War featured two LSU Press authors on its website this month. Historian Brianna Kirk reviewed Larry Lowenthal’s A Yankee Regiment in Confederate Louisiana: The 31st Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry in the Gulf South. “Lowenthal breathes life into the men of the 31st Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry,” says Kirk, “and provides a captivating account of a regiment that did not claim many crowning achievements like other Massachusetts regiments did.” Read Kirk’s full review of Lowenthal’s new book here.
H-Civ War editor Niels Eichhorn interviewed David Prior, author of Between Freedom and Progress: The Lost World of Reconstruction Politics, in a series produced for Civil War historians and readers. The interview, which is divided into two parts, covers Prior’s research, methodology, and hopes for future historians of Reconstruction; read part 1 here and part 2 here.
Megan L. Bever and Laura Mammina, coeditors (along with Lesley J. Gordon) of American Discord: The Republic and Its People in the Civil War Era, were featured on a recent episode of Keith Harris’s The Rogue Historian podcast. Bever and Mammina discuss the influence of historian George C. Rable on Civil War studies and the experience of compiling a volume in his honor. Listen here.
In a recent poll, Civil War Monitor readers voted The Marble Man: Robert E. Lee and His Image in American Society, written by Thomas L. Connelly, one of the top books about Robert E. Lee. “Connelly’s book was the first I read that pulled Lee off his pedestal and treated him as a mortal man—someone to be understood and even respected rather than worshiped,” said one of the readers. See the other books that made the final list here.
The Mark Twain House and Museum invited Miki Pfeffer, author of A New Orleans Author in Mark Twain’s Court: Letters from Grace King’s New England Sojourns, for a recent virtual presentation on Mark Twain, Grace King, and other literary voices of the early twentieth century. Watch the entire talk here.
The Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture recently hosted a special virtual presentation with Warren Eugene Milteer Jr., author of North Carolina’s Free People of Color, 1715–1885. Drawing on his new book, Milteer discusses the complex, fluid relationships between free blacks and whites before and after the abolition of slavery. Watch a recording of the presentation here.
ANZASA Online, the web presence of the Australian and New Zealand American Studies Association, invited Ryan C. McIlhenny to discuss his new book, To Preach Deliverance to the Captives: Freedom and Slavery in the Protestant Mind of George Bourne, 1780–1845, in a recent blog post. This intellectual biography of an influential early abolitionist “peels back yet another layer of the complexities of religious reform in nineteenth-century America,” argues McIlhenny. Read his post here.
In a recent article for the Chicago Review of Books, Jason Christian reviewed Sam V. H. Reese’s book Blue Notes: Jazz, Literature, and Loneliness, which investigates literary representations of jazz narratives. Christian describes Blue Notes as “a worthy contribution and a reminder of the power of America’s most original musical art.” Read the full review here.
Eric P. Robinson’s Reckless Disregard: St. Amant v. Thompson and the Transformation of Libel Law garnered a review in the latest issue of Communications Lawyer, a publication of the Forum on Communications Law of the American Bar Association. Reviewer Cynthia L. Counts states, “This isn’t just important reading for media law scholars, history buffs, or practicing attorneys. It is required reading.” See her full review of Robinson’s book here.
Bob Brinkmann recently recommended Swamp Souths: Literary and Cultural Ecologies as one of the best end-of-summer reads. Edited by Kirstin L. Squint, Eric Gary Anderson, Taylor Hagood, and Anthony Wilson, Swamp Souths is a dynamic collection of scholarship on swamps in southern spaces and their increased relevance in an era of climate change and political crisis. See Brinkmann’s full list of picks here.
The Tulsa Race Riot of 1921 is now at the forefront of news coverage, with Scott Ellsworth’s Death in a Promised Land serving as the primary source of information on the incident. Voice of America included Ellsworth’s highly influential book in a recent article describing current efforts to recover the remains of victims from the riot. Read the full article here.
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