Professor Richard Carwadine examines Lincoln's religious beliefs as America's crisis deepened, and looks at the role that the President's religious sentiments played in mobilizing support for the war among Union citizens. Richard Carwardine is Rhodes Professor of American history at the University of Oxford. He is the author of Lincoln: A Life of Purpose and Power (2003), which won the Lincoln Prize in 2004.
Kevin Phillips is the author of eight books, a journalist and a national elections commentator for CBS News during l988, 1992 and 96 presidential elections
In the Cousins’ Wars, Phillips poses the question, how did Anglo-America (Great Britain and the United states) become the global power by the late nineteenth century. He finds the answer to this overarching question by analyzing the causes and results of three critical wars: the English Civil War in 1640, the American Revolution, and the American Civil War. Philips marshals facts and events to show that these wars were a “crucible" of thought which British and Americans hammered out competing religious, ethnic, and social alliances to seize and maintain first place among the nations of the world.
Joyce Appleby, Professor Emerita, University of California, Los Angeles, explores how the men and women born after the American Revolution experienced and developed the theoretical ideas of liberty and independence put in place by their parents and grandparents.