Edward L. Ayers, a recipient of the National Humanities Medal, has won the Bancroft and Lincoln Prizes for his innovative histories of Civil War America. He is president emeritus of the University of Richmond, where he is executive director of New American History.
"Ayers’s splendid book… employs both a wide angle and zoom lens,
interspersing fascinating individual stories with insightful
historical context.… A seasoned historian… [and] a compelling
writer. [Ayers] orchestrates many different voices into a steady
rhythm, with a tempo that is fast-paced."
*Ronald C. White - New York Times Book Review*
"Ayers set out to re-create the lived experience of the Civil
War—for Northerners and Southerners, blacks and whites, men and
women, soldiers and civilians—without losing sight of the political
turmoil and destructive violence that affected all of them. In that
he has succeeded brilliantly."
*James Oakes - Washington Post*
"Beautifully, even spaciously, written,… [The Thin Light of Freedom
is] an elegy for people trapped in webs of politics and war that
they had, for the most part, spun for themselves."
*Allen C. Guelzo - Wall Street Journal*
"It’s through these individual stories that Ayers’s book achieves
its most gripping reading stretches, dramatizing as few recent
books have done the dual, entwined wars taking place in the years
it chronicles—one a war of soldiers and battlefields, the other a
war of social justice and the fight to enlarge the promise of
liberty.… The Thin Light of Freedom gathers the stories of all
these different aspects of the war’s final years and transmutes
them into a dark and oddly uplifting tale of the forging of modern
America."
*Steve Donoghue - Christian Science Monitor*
"Ayers tells multiple stories in The Thin Light of Freedom.
Painting with a broad brush, he sketches a vast canvas—the
bloodiest conflict in the Western world between 1815 and 1914. But
the two localities in the Great Valley remain his principal focus.…
Featured individuals carry Ayers’ narrative.… Soldiers and
civilians, men and women, free and slave, white and black, the
prominent and the obscure—all found themselves caught in an
extraordinary, dangerous, and unpredictable maelstrom. Edward Ayers
displays a… keen eye for moral complexity. His achievement will
endure."
*Daniel W. Crofts - Civil War Book Review*
"Luminous.… An exemplary contribution to the history of the Civil
War and its aftermath."
*Kirkus Reviews (starred review)*
"Superb.… An original contribution of unimpeachable
scholarship."
*Library Journal (starred review)*
"Ayers focuses on the thoughts, fears, and hopes of normal people
struggling to stay alive and make sense of the murderous events
taking place around them. The result is a superb, readable work of
history."
*Publishers Weekly (starred review)*
"Edward Ayers masters a unique combination of detailed, granular,
profoundly human social history with an extraordinary skill at
narrative and a rare humility. This is the brilliant,
long-awaited exclamation mark for the Valley of the Shadow."
*David W. Blight, author of Frederick Douglass: Prophet of
Freedom*
"Deftly crossing lines of race, party, and region, Ed Ayers embeds
the Civil War and Reconstruction in social settings enriched by
individual stories of freedom and slavery, suffering and loss,
heroism and desperation. Eloquent, vivid, insightful, and powerful,
The Thin Light of Freedom exposes racial and cultural fault lines
of enduring relevance."
*Alan Taylor, author of American Revolutions: A Continental
History, 1750-1804*
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