Most Popular Books by C. Vann Woodward

C. Vann Woodward''s The Burden of Southern History remains one of the essential history texts of our time. In it Woodward brilliantly addresses the interrelated themes of southern identity, southern distinctiveness, and the strains of irony that characterize much of the South''s historical experience. First published in 1960, the book quickly became a touchstone for generations of students. This updated third edition contains a chapter, "Look Away, Look Away," in which Woodward finds a plethora of additional ironies in the South''s experience. It also includes previously uncollected appreciations of Robert Penn Warren, to whom the book was originally dedicated, and William Faulkner. This edition also features a new foreword by historian William E. Leuchtenburg in which he recounts the events that led up to Woodward''s writing The Burden of Southern History, and reflects on the book''s -- and Woodward''s -- place in the study of southern history. The Burden of Southern History is quintessential Woodward -- wise, witty, ruminative, daring, and as alive in the twenty-first century as when it was written.

divC. Vann Woodward was one of the most prominent and respected American historians of the twentieth century. He was also a very gifted and frequent writer of letters, from his earliest days as a young student in Arkansas and Georgia to his later days at Yale when he became one of the arbiters of American intellectual culture./DIVdiv /DIVdivFor the first time, his sprightly, wry, sympathetic, and often funny letters are published, including those he wrote to figures as diverse as John Kennedy, David Riesman, Richard Hofstadter, and Robert Penn Warren. The letters shed new light not only on Woodward himself, but on what it meant to be an American radical and public intellectual, as well as on the complex politics and discourse of the historical profession and the anxious modulations of Southern culture./DIV

Between the era of America''s landmark antebellum compromises and that of the Compromise of 1877, a war had intervened, destroying the integrity of the Southern system but failing to determine the New South''s relation to the Union. While it did not restore the old order in the South, or restore the South to parity with the Union, it did lay down the political foundations for reunion, bring Reconstruction to an end, and shape the future of four million freedmen. Originally published in 1951, this classic work by one of America''s foremost experts on Southern history presents an important new interpretation of the Compromise, forcing historians to revise previous attitudes towards the Reconstruction period, the history of the Republican party, and the realignment of forces that fought the Civil War. Because much of the negotiating occurred in secrecy, historians have known less about this Compromise than others before it. Now reissued with a new introduction by Woodward, Reunion and Reaction gives us the other half of the story.

Pulitzer-Prize-winner and bestselling author C. Vann Woodward recreates the gripping account of the battle for Leyte Gulf—the greatest naval battle of World War II and the largest engagement ever fought on the high seas. For the Japanese, it represented their supreme effort; they committed to action virtually every operational fighting ship on the lists of the Imperial Navy, including two powerful new battleships of the Yamato class. It also ended in their greatest defeat—and a tremendous victory for the United States Navy. Features a new introduction by Evan Thomas, author of Sea of Thunder.

Includes 6 charts and 20 photos Pulitzer prize winning author C. Vann Woodward recounts the story of the largest naval battle of all time. "The Battle for Leyte Gulf was the greatest naval battle of the Second World War and the largest engagement ever fought on the high seas. It was composed of four separate yet closely interrelated actions, each of which involved forces comparable in size with those engaged in any previous battle of the Pacific War. The four battles, two of them fought simultaneously, were joined in three different bodies of water separated by as much as 500 miles. Yet all four were fought between dawn of one day and dusk of the next, and all were waged in the repulse of a single, huge Japanese operation. "They were guided by a master plan drawn up in Tokyo two months before our landing and known by the code name Sho Plan. It was a bold and complicated plan calling for reckless sacrifice and the use of cleverly conceived diversion. As an afterthought the suicidal Kamikaze campaign was inaugurated in connection with the plan. Altogether the operation was the most desperate attempted by any naval power during the war-and there were moments, several of them in fact, when it seemed to be approaching dangerously near to success. "Unlike the majority of Pacific naval battles that preceded it, the Battle of Leyte Gulf was not limited to an exchange of air strikes between widely separated carrier forces, although it involved action of that kind. It also included surface and subsurface action between virtually all types of fighting craft from motor torpedo boats to battleships, at ranges varying from point-blank to fifteen miles, with weapons ranging from machine guns to great rifles of 18-inch bore, fired "in anger" by the Japanese for the first time in this battle."

The Lost Lectures of C. Vann Woodward focuses on lectures Woodward delivered in the mid-twentieth century that reflect his life-long interest in exploring the contours and limits of liberalism during key moments of great change in the South.

Southern Populist leader Thomas E. Watson was a figure alternately eminent and notorious. Born before the Civil War, he lived through the turn of the century and past the close of the First World War, pursuing his career in an era as changing and paradoxical as himself. In the nineteenth century, Watson championed the rising Populist movement, an interracial alliance of agricultural interests, against the irresistible forces of industrial capitalism. The movement was broken under the wheels of the industrial political machine, but survived into the twentieth century in various "fantastic shapes...to be understood mainly by the psychology of frustration." Political frustration transformed Watson as well, from liberal to racial bigot and from popular spokesman to mob leader. In this biography, through careful study of public and private writings, and through objective and tolerant exposition, Mr. Woodward has attempted to solve the enigma of this man who did much to alter his times and who was, in turn, altered by them. "Mr. Woodward''s biography of Watson is a model of its kind. It has all the obvious qualities of scholarship, thoroughness and impartiality. It has, in addition, a sympathetic understanding of broad social movements, a mature appreciation of character, an original interpretation of economic facts and factors, an incisive criticism of political techniques, and a literary style that is always vigorous and sometimes brilliant."—H. S. Commager, New York Herald Tribune Books "Mr. Woodward''s biography of Watson constitutes the best one-volume history that has appeared of that first crop of social ideals, politically garnered in Populism...Mr. Woodward''s biography is also valuable in that it is something more than the story of Populism. It is a striking portrait of a man."—W. A. White, Saturday Review of Literature Includes the Author''s Preface to the 1955 Reissue.

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C. Vann Woodward, who died in 1999 at the age of 91, was America''s most eminent Southern historian, the winner of a Pulitzer Prize for Mary Chestnut''s Civil War and a Bancroft Prize for The Origins of the New South. Now, to honor his long and truly distinguished career, Oxford is pleased to publish this special commemorative edition of Woodward''s most influential work, The Strange Career of Jim Crow. The Strange Career of Jim Crow is one of the great works of Southern history. Indeed, the book actually helped shape that history. Published in 1955, a year after the Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education ordered schools desegregated, Strange Career was cited so often to counter arguments for segregation that Martin Luther King, Jr. called it "the historical Bible of the civil rights movement." The book offers a clear and illuminating analysis of the history of Jim Crow laws, presenting evidence that segregation in the South dated only to the 1890s. Woodward convincingly shows that, even under slavery, the two races had not been divided as they were under the Jim Crow laws of the 1890s. In fact, during Reconstruction, there was considerable economic and political mixing of the races. The segregating of the races was a relative newcomer to the region. Hailed as one of the top 100 nonfiction works of the twentieth century, The Strange Career of Jim Crow has sold almost a million copies and remains, in the words of David Herbert Donald, "a landmark in the history of American race relations."

No history of the European imagination, and no understanding of America''s meaning, would be complete without a record of the ideas, fantasies, and misconceptions the Old World has formed about the New. Europe''s fascination with America forms a contradictory pattern of hopes and fears, dreams and nightmares, yearnings and forebodings. America and Americans--according to one of their more indulgent European critics--have long been considered "a fairlyland of happy lunatics and lovable monsters." In The Old World''s New World, award-winning historian C. Vann Woodward has written a brilliant study of how Europeans have seen and discussed America over the last two centuries. Woodward shows how the character and the image of America in European writings often depended more upon Old World politics and ideology than upon New World realities. America has been seen both as human happiness resulting from the elimination of monarchy, aristocracy, and priesthood, and as social chaos and human misery caused by their removal. It was proof that democracy was the best form of government, or that mankind was incapable of self government. America was regularly used both as an inspiration for revolutionaries and as a stern warning against radicals of all kinds. Americans have been seen as uniformly materialistic, hot in pursuit of dollars: "Such unity of purpose," wrote Mrs. Trollope, "can, I believe, be found nowhere else except, perhaps, in an ants'' nest." And they have been admired for their industry--one young Russian Communist visited New York in 1925 and wrote that America is "where the ''future,'' at least in terms of industrialization, is being realized." Decade after decade, America has been hailed for its youth, and lambasted for its immaturity. It has been looked to as a model of liberty, and attacked for maintaining the tyranny of the majority. But always it has been a metaphor for the possibilities of human society--possibilities both bright and foreboding. After a year of heady talk of a "New World Order," of American victory in the Cold War, of a new American Century, The Old World''s New World provides a thoughtful and sobering perspective on how America has been seen in centuries past. C. Vann Woodward is one of America''s foremost living historians. His books have won every major history award--including the Pulitzer, Bancroft, and Parkman prizes--and he has served as president of the American Historical Association as well as the Organization of American Historians and the Southern Historical Association. With this new book, he further enhances his reputation while making his vast learning accessible to a general audience.

The late C. Vann Woodward was one of America''s most prominent historians. His books have won every major history award--including the Pulitzer, Bancroft, and Parkman Prizes--and he has served as president of both the American Historical Association and the Organization of American Historians. The Future of the Past collects two decades worth of Woodward''s most significant essays, addresses, and major book reviews, including two important presidential addresses--"The Future of the Past" and "Clio with Soul" (his trenchant assessment of Afro-American history)--as well as essays on changing historical concerns of the past decades, the value of comparative history, the South in Reconstruction times and the South today, and the use of fiction in history (and history in fiction). Woodward has written illuminating introductory comments on each section and offers an incisive general introduction about history and the direction the profession is taking today. Whether reviewing William Safire''s novel Freedom or evaluating Henry Adam''s portrait of Jefferson, Woodward''s essays reflect a lifetime of thought on history and historical writing, and are essential reading for anyone concerned with either.