Description
Book SynopsisWeaving together biography and political history, Michael Woods restores Jefferson Davis and Stephen Douglas's fatefully entwined lives and careers to the centre of the Civil War era. Operating on personal, partisan, and national levels, Woods traces the deep roots of Democrats' internal strife.
Trade ReviewSpeaks to the internal tensions within party organizations, the blinding force of ambition, and the ways distrust of democratic processes and institutions can destroy democracy itself. In that, it is a book for our time.--
Library Journal Even readers who find the Civil War or politics boring could find this well-written narrative gripping. It helps especially now for readers needing to escape the present. All this solid but entertaining history really lacks for is background music.--
New York Journal of Books This impressive new book . . . deftly recovers the dynamism and disagreements that animated, and ultimately destroyed, the Democratic Party on the eve of the Civil War. . . . Diligently researched, closely argued, and clearly written,
Arguing Until Doomsday is an essential book for students of antebellum politics and the road to Civil War.--
Civil War News Woods has written one of the most engaging and accessible histories of the pre-Civil War Democratic Party to date. . . . [
Arguing Until Doomsday] advances the field of American political history and affords nuance to a period that is always in danger of becoming oversimplified.--
The Civil War Monitor
