Books by Eric Foner

The leading text, in a compact, value edition.

Provides the first comprehensive directory of the over 1,500 African Americans who held political office in the South during the Reconstruction era. The book presents an impressive amount of information about the antebellum status, occupations, property ownership, and military service of these officials.

From one of our most distinguished historians comes a groundbreaking new examination of the myths and realities of the period after the Civil War.Drawing on a wide range of long-neglected documents, Eric Foner places a new emphasis on black experiences and roles during the era. We see African Americans as active agents in overthrowing slavery, in shaping Reconstruction, and creating a legacy long obscured and misunderstood. He compellingly refutes long-standing misconceptions of Reconstruction, and shows how the failures of the time sowed the seeds of the Civil Rights struggles of the 1950s and 60s. Richly illustrated and movingly written, this is an illuminating and essential addition to our understanding of this momentous era.

Examines the aftermath of emancipation in the South and the restructuring of society by which the former slaves gained, beyond their freedom, a new relation to the land they worked on, to the men they worked for, and to the government they lived under.

For almost four decades, Eric Foner, one of America's most distinguished historians, has introduced readers of his journalism to unknown or forgotten characters in American history, methodically unearthing the hidden history of American radicalism.