The Emergence of Lincoln; Volume I ...Douglas, Buchanan, and Party Chaos 1857-1859

New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1950. Book Club? (No price on DJ, but no indentation at rear cover). Hardcover. Good/Fair. xiv, 472 pages. Illustrations. Footnotes. Index. Some highlighting noted. DJ worn, torn, soiled, with large chips. Joseph Allan Nevins (May 20, 1890 - March 5, 1971) was an American historian and journalist, known for his extensive work on the history of the Civil War and his biographies of such figures as Grover Cleveland, Hamilton Fish, Henry Ford, and John D. Rockefeller, as well as his public service. He was a leading exponent of business history and oral history. Nevins wrote his first book, The Life of Robert Rogers (1914) (about a Colonial American frontiersman and Loyalist) and a history of the University of Illinois (1917) during his postgraduate studies in that institution. Nevins then accepted positions with the New York Evening Post and The Nation and worked as a journalist in New York City for twenty years, as well as continued writing and editing history books. He resigned from the Nation in 1918, and the Post about a year after publishing its history The Evening Post: A Century of Journalism in 1922. In 1923 Nevins published American Social History as Recorded by British Travelers and The American States During and After the Revolution, 1775-1789 in 1924. In 1928, Nevins joined the history faculty of Columbia University, where he remained for three decades until his mandatory retirement in 1958. Nevins served as special representative of the Office of War Information in Australia and New Zealand in 1943-1944, and in 1945-1946 worked in London as chief public affairs officer at the American embassy. Ordeal of the Union is an eight-volume series of books (published 1947-1971) on mid-19th century American history, and particularly on the American Civil War and its background, written by historian Allan Nevins. The first two books in the series have the collective title Ordeal of the Union (with differing subtitles), the third and fourth the collective title The Emergence of Lincoln, and the fifth through the eighth the collective title The War for the Union; the series is, however, generally referred to as Ordeal of the Union as a whole. The individual books are: Ordeal of the Union: Fruits of Manifest Destiny, 1847-1852 (1947); Ordeal of the Union: A House Dividing, 1852-1857 (1947); The Emergence of Lincoln: Douglas, Buchanan, and Party Chaos, 1857-1859 (1950); The Emergence of Lincoln: Prologue to Civil War, 1859-1861 (1950); The War for the Union: The Improvised War, 1861-1862 (1959); The War for the Union: War Becomes Revolution, 1862-1863 (1960); The War for the Union: The Organized War, 1863-1864 (1971); The War for the Union: The Organized War to Victory, 1864-1865 (1971); For the last two volumes, published in 1971, Nevins won the U.S. National Book Award in History. Derived from a Kirkus review: This volume is an important and scholarly contribution to American history. While the focus is on a relatively brief period, of the years leading up to the Civil War, Nevins' lively handling, his arresting detail, his selective sense of drama, his gift for penetrating and revealing personalities, makes it good reading, even apart from the earlier volumes. Between 1846 and 1861, when Lincoln took the helm, America was burgeoning into a new prosperity, despite the lowering clouds of dissension, the recurrent waves of bitter struggle for new territory by both sides, the extremists north and south. This is social history at its best; it is biographical history, as each of the leaders emerges clear-cut. Nevins recognizes the various contributory factors, but feels the issue of slavery fundamental to the whole, and holds that view throughout. Particularly interesting is his analysis of the part Stephen Douglas played. The John Brown episode is done with terrific impact. The whole Kansas story is clarified as in almost no other overall history of the period. The various plans that might have avoided war are weighed, but here the extremists swung the final issue. Buchanan's administration is assessed with perceptive and reasonably bjective brilliance. An important addition to period history.