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Most canonical interpretations of the American Civil War revolve around some facet of the great national contest over the status and future of slavery in the western territories.

In the latest of our occasional Reviews in History podcast series, Anthony McFarlane talks to Felipe Fernandez-Armesto about his new book, Our America: A Hispanic History of the United States.
Felipe Fernández-Armesto (born 1950) is a British historian and author of several popular works of revisionist history.

Research into the global and transnational dimensions of the American Civil War is indisputably in vogue.

Until about 15 years ago the complex history of the links between the north of Ireland and colonial America was something of a brackish backwater in 18th-century Atlantic studies. Admittedly, the internal history of Ulster Presbyterianism had already come alive, thanks to the work of David Hayton on the early 18th century, and of David Miller and Ian McBride on the final decades.
The editors believe that The Encyclopedia of the Wars of the Early American Republic, 1783–1812: A Political, Social, and Military History is the first to be dedicated to the military history of the early United States, and on this evidence it has been long overdue.

‘“Chris’mas, we allus had plenny good sumpin’ t’eat, an’ we all got tegether an’ had lots er fun,”’ stated Rias Body, an ex-slave from Alabama, to a Federal Writers’ Project interviewer.

The title of Richard Brookhiser's biography of the 16th President indicates the innovative nature of its perspective. Brookhiser contends that new light can be shed on Lincoln's personal and political evolution by tracing his regular reflections and adaptations of the ideas of the Founding Fathers of the United States.

The literature surrounding British attitudes toward the American Civil War has a long history extending almost back to the conflict itself, in part because it speaks to a question that has long intrigued academic and popular readers alike; namely, how might the outcome of the conflict been different if the British government had extended diplomatic recognition to the Confederacy or even interve

President Obama’s recent visit to Ireland inspired a new wave of interest in the international experiences of formerly enslaved African American Frederick Douglass. He travelled to Britain in 1845 and spent the first few months of his trip gaining support from Irish audiences in Dublin, Cork, Limerick and Belfast, to name a few of the cities he visited.

The Southampton Rebellion remains the most famous slave rebellion in American history. It was not the largest or even the first. From the hinterlands of the African continent to the plantations of the New World, rebellion and resistance on the part of enslaved African Americans was common, persistent, and widespread.