Note: Always check the re-seller prices. Many of these books can be purchased in "very good" condition for a very low price.
Pre-Civil War General American History Overviews
Wood, Gordon. Empire of Liberty, 1789 - 1815 (Oxford History of the United States) (2011) 800 pages.
Howe, Daniel Walker. What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815 - 1848 (Oxford History of the United States) (2009) 902 pages.
Wilentz, Sean. The Rise of American Democracy: From Jefferson to Lincoln (2006) 1,104 pages.
Slavery and Abolitionism
Berlin, Ira. Generations of Captivity: A History of African-American Slaves (2004) 384 pages.
Baptist, Edward. The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism (2014) 560 pages.
Sinha, Manisha. The Slave's Cause: A History of Abolitionism (2016) 784 pages.
Overall Telling of How the War came About
Varon, Elizabeth. Disunion!: The Coming of the American Civil War, 1789 - 1859 (2009) 472 pages.
Morrison, Michael. Slavery and the American West: The Eclipse of Manifest Destiny (1999) 416 pages.
Potter, David. Impending Crisis, 1848 - 1851 (1976) 672 pages. A classic.
Specific Topics
Karp, Mathew. This Vast Southern Empire: Slaveholders at the Helm of American Foreign Policy (2016) 368 pages,
Bordewich, Fergus. Bound for Canaan: The Epic Story of the Underground Railroad, America's First Civil Rights Movement (2006) 592 pages.
Foner, Eric. Gateway to Freedom: The Hidden History of the Underground Railroad (2016) 352 pages.
Lubet, Steven. Fugitive Justice: Runaways, Rescuers, and Slavery on Trial (2010) (Fugitive Slave Act cases)
May, Robert. Manifest Destiny's Underworld: Filibustering in Antebellum America (2004) 440 pages.
Holt, Michael. The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party: Jacksonian Politics and the Onset of the Civil War (1999) 1,296 pages.
Foner, Eric. Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party Before the Civil War (1970, 1995 2nd edition) 400 pages. A classic
Engs, Robert and Randall Miller (eds). The Birth of the Grand Old Party: The First Generation (2002) 216 pages. 6 essays by top historians.
Specific Events
Forbes, Robert Pierce. The Missouri Compromise and Its Aftermath: Slavery and the Meaning of America (2009) 384 pages.
Freehling, William H. Prelude to Civil War: The Nullification Controversy in South Carolina, 1816-1836 (1966) 416 pages.
Greenburg, Amy. A Wicked War: Polk, Clay, Lincoln, and the 1846 U.S. Invasion of Mexico (2013) 368 pages.
Stegmaier, Mark. Texas, New Mexico and the Compromise of 1850 (2012) 452 pages.
Waugh, John. On the Brink of Civil War: The Compromise of 1850... (2003) 213 pages. (a short, easy read)
Etcheson, Nicole. Bleeding Kansas: Contested Liberty in the Civil War Era (2004) 384 pages.
Allen, Austin. Origins of the Dred Scott Case: Jacksonian Jurisprudence and the Supreme Court, 1837-1857 (2006) 288 pages.
Guelzo, Alan. Lincoln and Douglas: The Debates that Defined America (2009) 416 pages.
Horowitz, Tony. Midnight Rising: John Brown and the Raid that Sparked the Civil War (2011) 384 pages.
McGinty, John. John Brown's Trial (2009) 384 pages.
Dew, Charles. Apostles of Disunion: Southern Secession Commissioners and the Causes of the Civil War (2002) 144 pages.
Reynolds, Donald E. Editors Make War: Southern Newspapers in the Secession Crisis (2006) 327 pages.
Holzer, Harold. Lincoln President-Elect: Abraham Lincoln and the Great Secession Winter 1860-1861 (2008) 640 pages.
Bowman, Shearer Davis. At the Precipice: Americans North and South during the Secession Crisis (2010) 392 pages.
Detzer, David. Allegiance: Allegiance: Fort Sumter, Charleston, and the Beginning of the Civil War (2002) 400 pages.
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