A Disease in the Public Mind
A New Understanding of Why We Fought the Civil War
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Narrated by:
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William Hughes
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By:
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Thomas Fleming
About this listen
By the time his body hung from the gallows for his crimes at Harper’s Ferry, abolitionists had made John Brown a "holy martyr" in the fight against Southern slave owners. But Northern hatred for Southerners had been long in the making. Northern rage was born of the conviction that New England, whose spokesmen and militia had begun the American Revolution, should have been the leader of the new nation. Instead, they had been displaced by Southern "slavocrats" like Thomas Jefferson. And Northern envy only exacerbated the South’s greatest fear: race war. In the 60 years preceding the outbreak of civil war, Northern and Southern fanatics ramped up the struggle over slavery. By the time they had become intractable enemies, only the tragedy of a bloody civil war could save the Union.
In this riveting and character-driven history, one of America’s most respected historians traces the "disease in the public mind" - distortions of reality that seized large numbers of Americans - in the decades-long run-up to the Civil War.
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The First Congress was the most important in US history, says prizewinning author and historian Fergus Bordewich, because it established how our government would actually function. Had it failed - as many at the time feared it would - it's possible that the United States as we know it would not exist today.
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Compelling
- By Jean on 03-05-18
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The Thin Light of Freedom
- The Civil War and Emancipation in the Heart of America
- By: Edward L. Ayers
- Narrated by: James Edward Thomas
- Length: 18 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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At the crux of America's history stand two astounding events: the immediate and complete destruction of the most powerful system of slavery in the modern world, followed by a political reconstruction in which new constitutions established the fundamental rights of citizens for formerly enslaved people. Few people living in 1860 would have dared imagine either event, and yet, in retrospect, both seem to have been inevitable. In a beautifully crafted narrative, Edward L. Ayers restores the drama of the unexpected to the history of the Civil War.
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great history
- By Linda Sisco on 11-30-17
By: Edward L. Ayers
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Don't Know Much About the Civil War
- Everything You Need to Know About America's Greatest Conflict but Never Learned
- By: Kenneth C. Davis
- Narrated by: Dick Estell
- Length: 16 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Millions of Americans, bored by dull textbooks, are in the dark about the most significant event in our history. Now New York Times bestselling author Kenneth C. Davis comes to the rescue, deftly sorting out the players, the politics, and the key events—Emancipation and Reconstruction, Shiloh and Gettysburg, Generals Grant and Lee, Harriet Beecher Stowe—and much more.
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Good Civil War book
- By Steven on 08-04-12
By: Kenneth C. Davis
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Jacksonland
- President Andrew Jackson, Cherokee Chief John Ross, and a Great American Land Grab
- By: Steve Inskeep
- Narrated by: Steve Inskeep
- Length: 11 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Jacksonland is the thrilling narrative history of two men - President Andrew Jackson and Cherokee chief John Ross - who led their respective nations at a crossroads of American history. Five decades after the Revolutionary War, the United States approached a constitutional crisis. At its center stood two former military comrades locked in a struggle that tested the boundaries of our fledgling democracy. Jacksonland is their story.
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Fantastic and Thoughtful
- By Elizabeth Westbrook on 05-05-16
By: Steve Inskeep
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A Self-Made Man
- The Political Life of Abraham Lincoln, 1809-1849
- By: Sidney Blumenthal
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 21 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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The first of a multivolume history of Lincoln as a political genius - from his obscure beginnings to his presidency, his assassination, and the overthrow of his post-Civil War dreams of Reconstruction. This first volume traces Lincoln from his painful youth, describing himself as "a slave", to his emergence as the man we recognize as Abraham Lincoln.
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I Can't Wait for Volume II!
- By NC-N-NC on 06-14-16
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The Cause of All Nations
- An International History of the American Civil War
- By: Don H. Doyle
- Narrated by: Adam Grupper
- Length: 14 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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In The Cause of All Nations, distinguished historian Don H. Doyle explains that the Civil War was more than an internal American conflict; it was a struggle that spanned the Atlantic Ocean. This audiobook follows the agents of the North and South who went abroad to tell the world what they were fighting for, and the foreign politicians, journalists, and intellectuals who told America and the world what they thought this war was really about - or ought to be about.
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Enlightening perspective
- By Roger on 05-07-15
By: Don H. Doyle
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The Making of America: Volume 1
- Alexander Hamilton, Andrew Jackson, and Abraham Lincoln
- By: Teri Kanefield
- Narrated by: Pete Cross
- Length: 12 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Unlike other biographies, the Making of America series goes beyond individual narratives linking influential figures to create an overarching story of America's growth that will deepen understanding of the country we live in today. This bundle featuring Alexander Hamilton, Abraham Lincoln, and Andrew Jackson tells the story of American constitutional history from the founding of the nation through the end of the Civil War.
By: Teri Kanefield
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After Lincoln
- How the North Won the Civil War and Lost the Peace
- By: A. J. Langguth
- Narrated by: Tom Perkins
- Length: 13 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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With Abraham Lincoln's assassination, his "team of rivals" was left adrift. President Andrew Johnson, a former slave owner from Tennessee, was challenged by Northern Congressmen, Radical Republicans led by Thaddeus Stephens and Charles Sumner, who wanted to punish the defeated South. When Johnson's policies placated the rebels at the expense of the freed black men, radicals in the House impeached him for trying to fire Secretary of War Edwin Stanton.
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Mediocre
- By Rodney on 10-14-14
By: A. J. Langguth
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The True Flag
- Theodore Roosevelt, Mark Twain, and the Birth of American Empire
- By: Stephen Kinzer
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 10 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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How should the United States act in the world? Americans cannot decide. Sometimes we burn with righteous anger, launching foreign wars and deposing governments. Then we retreat - until the cycle begins again. No matter how often we debate this question, none of what we say is original. Every argument is a pale shadow of the first and greatest debate, which erupted more than a century ago. Its themes resurface every time Americans argue whether to intervene in a foreign country.
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Timely and important
- By Joshua C. Packard on 02-20-17
By: Stephen Kinzer
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This Mighty Scourge
- Perspectives on the Civil War
- By: James M. McPherson
- Narrated by: Barrett Whitener
- Length: 8 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Battle Cry of Freedom and many other award-winning books, James M. McPherson is America's preeminent Civil War historian. Now, in this collection of provocative and illuminating essays, McPherson offers fresh insight into many of the most enduring questions about one of the defining moments in our nation's history.
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An Introduction to McPherson
- By Roy on 05-03-09
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World War II endures in the popular imagination as a heroic struggle between good and evil, with villainous Hitler driving its events. But Hitler was not in power when the conflict erupted in Asia. His armies did not fight in multiple theaters, his empire did not span the Eurasian continent, and he did not inherit any of the spoils of war. That central role belonged to Joseph Stalin. Drawing on ambitious new research in Soviet, European, and US archives, Stalin’s War revolutionizes our understanding of this global conflict by moving its epicenter to the east.
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Sean McMeekin Does It Again!
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What listeners say about A Disease in the Public Mind
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Donald Bullard
- 07-12-16
Refreshing and challenging
What did you love best about A Disease in the Public Mind?
The reevaluation of Colonial thru Civil War history can never be over mined. Thomas Fleming deserves props for this refreshing examination of what was going on in America in regards to slavery. Many questions we face today including the politics of race are embedded in the discussion from this earlier period.
Who was your favorite character and why?
Thomas Jefferson was a compelling figure. A genuinely twisted individual.
Which scene was your favorite?
The Haitian uprising and America's near hysterical silence on the matter.
Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?
Truly moment after moment the story was compelling. Reading about men moved from the colonial period to end slavery, and the end of slavery in the north. I was also surprised at how much history is neglected and forgotten in the modern narrative. When you finish this you realize that whole levels of understanding can be added to the Civil War and what it meant to American, then and now.
Any additional comments?
I had the pleasure of reading this, and then listening to it, both methods are satisfactory.
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3 people found this helpful
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- John
- 06-11-24
A Flawed Understanding of Why We Fought the War
Faced with the same facts that generations of past historians have analyzed and interpreted, the temptation to spin those facts differently, to make the familiar old story somehow new and startling, must be an occupational hazard for current historians. But while I empathize with the ambition that motivated this book, I can’t agree with the results.
On one level, Thomas Fleming has given us a solid rundown of the events that led up to the war. For me it was a welcome refresher course in what happened, when, and why. But the interpretation of those events is off kilter from the start.
Yes, abolitionists were just as unsparingly offensive as pro-slavery agitators. Yes, they riled up just as much sectional hatred and misunderstanding as did their southern counterparts. New England's self-righteousness was just as infuriating as the South's aristocratic arrogance. But Fleming’s curse-on-both-their-houses approach, and his retrospective appeal for calm, fail to inhabit the tenor of the times he chronicles. Worse, it misses the “precise fact” that Lincoln outlined in his Cooper Union speech:
“All they [the South] ask we could readily grant if we thought slavery right. All we ask they could as readily grant if we they thought it wrong. Their thinking it right and our thinking it wrong is the precise fact upon which depends the whole controversy.”
If, as Fleming urges, the final body count should be adjusted upwards from the generally accepted 600,000+ to a round million (counting postwar deaths from wounds and diseases) that is truly eye-opening. But a deeper understanding of the horrendous human cost of this national tragedy simply underlines the intransigent nature of the issue that precipitated it.
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- Jared R
- 01-20-23
Eye opening history
One of the best history books I’ve had the chance to pick up, should be read by anyone with an interest in the antebellum period of American history.
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- Anonymous User
- 08-31-22
good book for history
fantastic book on slavery and more. I one of the best books ive listened too in years
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- JB
- 11-12-24
The Cure was worse than the Disease
Not much new understanding of the scourge of united States slavery is likely to be discovered in this moderately entertaining overview of the major events and figures in early American history leading up to the death of "Honest" Abe Lincoln in 1865.
Chock full of all the acts, actions and characters you missed while sleeping through Social Studies class, this book is yet another book that the listener has to ask...why exactly was this book written?
There isn't much revision done here. Fleming does demonstrate John Brown was rather misguided. Or evil. Or crazy. Take your pick. And he does a good job of showing the abolitionists pushed for the eradication of slavery with a zealous fervor that often undermined their arguments. And he does describe effectively the southern white fear of a race war if slavery was not allowed to expand. All good and worthwhile to mention.
However, this book comes from a unionist. All of the pages of this book seek to obscure a rather simple fact: the southern states had every right to secede according to the federalized government they helped create in the late 1780s. Unless I missed it, I don't think the author ever once entertained this viewpoint. He did say several times that one character or another said the Union was perpetual, and secession was not authorized. This is blatantly untrue, if you read the notes and founding correspondence. The states never would have ratified the Constitution if they did not have the right to leave it if the general government became tyrannical and inimical to their vested interests. Which clearly is what they thought.
As with any court historian, Lincoln has be shown as a saint. In this volume he is again shown as a sage leader, whose untimely death led to more bitterness and oppression and suffering of the South. If only he had lived, what might have been? Oh, I don't know, he was the man who waged an unconstitutional war against his own countrymen, leading to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of men, women and children. If you want a more worthwhile portrait of Lincoln listen to "The Real Lincoln" by Thomas DiLorenzo. Lincoln's so called magnanimous attitude towards the South ("we must never view them as enemies") and Grant's so called generous surrender terms granted Lee, and saving of Lee's men from starvation...is somehow undermined by the scorched Earth, total war mass murdering carried out by Sherman and his march to the sea.
A good, factual overview of events, with a distorted understanding for why the war was fought. It wasn't even a civil war. The South formed its own country, it had no interest in conquering the government in Washington, DC. And to push slavery as the primary reason, and not the economic policies and self government desires of the South, as the principle reason for the war is whitewashing to say the least.
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- Anonymous User
- 07-20-22
Not quite what I expected
So glad I read this even tho I thought it was going to be centered around the American Civil war it does back much further. Well written and well read
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- Samuel Stephen Ross
- 09-03-22
The best there is in my opinion
As the son of a Northern Father and Southern Mother, I’ve never fallen hard on either side of The Civil war. My only goal has been to understand each player in it. Now if you ARE biased for one side, this book might anger you because it will not blame one side. Instead it blames BOTH sides; illustrating how BOTH were indeed driven to a vitriolic fever pitch by “A Disease of the Public Mind”. The only one who seemed to keep his mind about him was Abraham Lincoln. And he— with his genius for timing, was able to navigate the ship of state through & around obstacles like no one else could have. Unfortunately, when the time came for that same mind to navigate reconstruction, John Wilkes Booth silenced it forever; leaving the fate of the nation to vindictive chaos.
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- David
- 04-01-21
Listen skeptically, but still listen
I do not share the author’s view of the abolitionists. Surely, they deserve better treatment than they get in this book.
That said, history is full of warring truths. This is not a lost cause polemic. Rather, it is a useful analysis of the evolution of what became an irrepressible conflict.
Slavery was a vast torture machine. It was also the foundation of enormous, historic wealth. And slavery was more than just a torture machine as the author asserts. It had many facets. Nevertheless, it was hideously cruel. The spiritual awakening that created abolitionism fixated in horror and righteous fury before this cruelty. It is fair to point out that fanaticism was also present in the abolitionist movement. John Brown was deranged. But to paint the abolitionists with broad stripes of fanaticism is unjust. The author flirts with this injustice. Remember the horror the abolitionists bore witness to. Their response was as intense as the horror.
But this gets to a key and vital point the author makes. The South lived in horror too. The slaughter of Haitian war with Napoleon felt like a real consequence to them should their slave system collapse - a vital reality to the southern white mind of that time. Combine that with the feared loss of the fabulous wealth of the slave plantation economy and therein lies a core of blood conflict.
I don’t buy into the author’s thesis. He blames the abolitionists mostly for the civil war. Wrong, but not crazy. I do believe he presents an important historic argument. Understanding it’s failings and strengths is why this book is worth a good listen.
The greatest weakness of this book is the lack of slave testimony. Slaves had agency. They fled cruel oppression. The North was flooded with their accounts. Such accounts were brutally suppressed in the South. But in the North normal people read the testimony, perceived the evil, and responded accordingly. I very much wish the author had wrestled with this issue. The slaves made their case and won. The slave masters made theirs and lost. Missing in this book.
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12 people found this helpful
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- Chad
- 10-09-19
Important perspective
One of the most important books I’ve ever read. It illustrates the importance of understanding and brotherhood over idealism and radicalism even in the face of insurmountable tragedy.
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- Ira S. Saposnik
- 09-28-21
One of the finest
Books you will ever hear dear. It’s not queer no fear and no king Lear. Every year a mere sphere of beer makes my sneer here
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