Books by Nina Silber

Exploring gender relations during the Civil War, this book compares broad ideological constructions of masculinity and femininity among Northerners and Southerners. It finds that rhetoric on both sides connected soldiers' reasons for fighting to the women left at home.

This book casts a spotlight on some of the most overlooked, least understood participants in the American Civil War: the women of the North. Unlike their Confederate counterparts, most Northern women stayed far from the dangers of battle. Nonetheless, they enlisted in the Union cause on their home ground, and the experience transformed their lives.