David W. Blight | The New York Review of Books

The Two Constitutions

James Oakes’s deeply researched book argues that two very different readings of the 1787 charter put the United States on a course of all but inevitable conflict.

The Crooked Path to Abolition: Abraham Lincoln and the Antislavery Constitution

by James Oakes

June 8, 2023 issue

An American Pogrom

Uncovering the truth about the 1898 massacre of black voters in Wilmington, North Carolina.

Wilmington’s Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy

by David Zucchino

November 19, 2020 issue

Republicans: The New Confederacy

November 5, 2020 issue

‘A Doubtful Freedom’

Andrew Delbanco’s ‘The War Before the War: Fugitive Slaves and the Struggle for America’s Soul from the Revolution to the Civil War’

The War Before the War: Fugitive Slaves and the Struggle for America’s Soul from the Revolution to the Civil War

by Andrew Delbanco

January 16, 2020 issue

The Silent Type

The life of Ulysses S. Grant, a nobody who became almost everything

Grant

by Ron Chernow

The Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant: The Complete Annotated Edition

edited by John F. Marszalek, with David S. Nolen and Louie P. Gallo

May 24, 2018 issue