Eric Foner

The historian who made Reconstruction central to how Americans understand their own unfinished revolution. His Reconstruction is the definitive account of the years after the Civil War when the country tried, and was forced to stop trying, to build a multiracial democracy. The Second Founding reads the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments as a refounding of the republic. He writes about the promise the country made after Appomattox and then abandoned.