Civil War Wives: The Lives & Times of Angelina Grimke Weld, Varina Howell Davis & Julia Dent Grant

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Description

A unique understanding of the tumultuous social and political landscape of the Civil War as told through the lives and marriages of three "accidental heroines." FIRST TIME IN PAPERBACK. VINTAGE CIVIL WAR LIBRARY. In these moving stories if Angelina Grimke Weld, wife of abolitionist Theodore Weld, Varina Howell Davis, wife of Confederate president Jefferson Davis, and Julia Dent grant, wife of Ulysses S. Grant, Carol Berkin reveals how women understood the cataclysmic events of their day. Their stories, taken together, help reconstruct the era of the Civil War with a greater depth and complexity by adding women's experiences and voices to their male counterparts.

Reviews

"A Fascinating and lively narrative" The Christian Science Monitor

"Thoroughly fascinating. . . . belongs on the bookshelf of all Civil War enthusiasts, right next to the biographies of Ulysses S. Grant, Jefferson Davis, and Mary Lincoln." Jay Winik, author of April 1865 andThe Great Upheaval

"Using letters, books and other historical documents, Berkin paints a lively and empathetic picture of these women's lives." St. Petersburg Times

"A well written, highly accessible exploration of marriage and the cult of true womanhood as it played out in the lives of three southern women. Berkin's fascinating case studies . . . reveal the complex interplay out in the lives of southern women of the Civil War era."Civil War Book Review

Author Bio

Carol Berkin received her A.B. from Barnard College and her M.A. and Ph.D. from Columbia University. She taught at Baruch College from 1972 to 2008 and has taught at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York since 1983. She is currently Baruch Presidential Professor of History. Berkin is the author of Revolutionary Mothers- Women in the Struggle for America's Independence, A Brilliant Solution- Inventing the American Constitution, Jonathan Sewall- Odyssey of an American Loyalist, First Generations- Women in Colonial America, and numerous articles and reviews. She lives in New York City and Guilford, Connecticut.