How the South Won the Civil War

The argument that ideas defeated on the battlefield did not die there. Richardson traces how an oligarchic vision of who truly counts as an American migrated west and persisted in the country's politics long after Appomattox, shaping struggles that look unrelated until you see the through line. A bracing companion to the standard story of national progress, and a reminder that the franchise fight has always been the same fight in new clothes.

A historian of the United States whose work traces the long contest between democracy and the forces that have sought to narrow it. Democracy Awakening sets the present moment in the sweep of the national history. How the South Won the Civil War argues that ideas defeated on the battlefield persisted in American politics long after. Her daily newsletter, written for a general readership, has made the historian's long view a part of millions of people's mornings.