History Professor Publishes “America Aflame”

David Goldfield, history, just published “America Aflame: How the Civil War Created a Nation” with Bloomsbury Press, to much critical acclaim.

According to Kirkus Reviews, Goldfield “offers an intriguing new perspective on what he convincingly argues to be not only the defining event of 1800s America, but the defining event of our nation’s entire political and cultural history. For Goldfield, evangelical politics drives nearly every facet of the historical machinations of the period. Throughout the narrative, evangelicalism informs the debates around abolition, the Antebellum cultural conflicts born of large-scale immigration, territorial expansion and the rural religious fervor that led to the first cannon blasts at Fort Sumter. The author’s examination of the intensity of individual religious thought and religiously informed social activity in the camps provides readers a new comprehension of this extraordinary war.”