Books by David W. Blight

In this sensitive intellectual biography David Blight undertakes the first systematic analysis of the impact of the Civil War on Frederick Douglass' life and thought, offering new insights into the meaning of the war in American history and in the Afro-American experience.

"An acclaimed historian's definitive biography of the most important African-American figure of the 19th century, Frederick Douglass, who was to his century what Martin Luther King, Jr. was to the 20th century"--

No historical event has left as deep an imprint on America's collective memory as the Civil War. In the war's aftermath, Americans had to embrace and cast off a traumatic past. David Blight explores the perilous path of remembering and forgetting, and reveals its tragic costs to race relations and America's national reunion.