Eric Foner’s The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery just won the Bancroft Prize in history. When I studied history at college, I specialized (informally) in the history of slavery in the America and Foner, naturally, came up. His lengthy volume, Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution is the best work on Reconstruction out there (though John Hope Franklin’s Reconstruction After the Civil War is the best short history of Reconstruction).

Foner is often characterized as a Marxist historian, but let’s honest. All “Marxist” often means in an academic context is writing books that address the issue of class.