The story of Reconstruction is not simply about the rebuilding of the South after the Civil War. In many ways, the late nineteenth century defined modern America, as Southerners, Northerners, and Westerners forged a national identity that united three very different regions into a country that could become a world power.
A sweeping history of the United States from the era of Abraham Lincoln to the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, this engaging book tracks the formation of the American middle class while stretching the boundaries of our understanding of Reconstruction. Historian Heather Cox Richardson ties the North and West into the post–Civil War story that usually focuses narrowly on the South.
By weaving together the experiences of real individuals who left records in their own words-from ordinary Americans such as a plantation mistress, a Native American warrior, and a labor organizer, to prominent historical figures such as Andrew Carnegie, Julia Ward Howe, Booker T. Washington, and Sitting Bull-Richardson tells a story about the creation of modern America.
"Richardson tells a different story about the United States as a whole during a reconceptualized period of 'Reconstruction' after the Civil War."
Sheldon Hackney, University of Pennsylvania
"Highly original, deeply researched, and important, West from Appomattox has the added advantage of being extremely well written: Heather Cox Richardson's prose is clear, accessible, and compelling."
Eric Arnesen, University of Illinois at Chicago
"With a marvelous sense of scope, narrative lucidity, and thorough research, Heather Richardson makes the convincing case that Americans still live in the world that Reconstruction built-or left partly unbuilt. A skilled historian of political economy, Richardson has here written a new and important synthesis of late-nineteenth-century American society enmeshed in a great struggle to determine jus
