Mary Chesnuts Civil War, Mary Chesnut
Mary Chesnuts Civil War, Mary Chesnut
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Mary Chesnut's Civil War

Author: Mary Chesnut, C. Vann Woodward

Narrator: Suzanne Toren

Unabridged: 50 hr 41 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 03/04/2025

Includes: Bonus Material Bonus Material Included

Synopsis

The incomparable Civil War diarist Mary Chesnut wrote that she had the luck “always to stumble in on the real show.”Married to a high-ranking member of the Confederate government, she was ideally placed to watch and to record the South’s headlong plunge to ruin, and she left in her journals an unsurpassed account of the old regime’s death throes, its moment of high drama in world history.With intelligence and passion, she described the turbulent events of politics and war, as well as the complex society around her. In her own circles, the aristocratic, patriarchal, slave-holding Mary Chesnut was a figure of heresy and of paradox: she had a horror of slavery and called herself an abolitionist from early youth.Edited by the eminent historian C. Vann Woodward, Mary Chesnut’s Civil War presents a full and reliable edition of Chesnut’s journals, restoring her to her rightful place in American history and literature.

About Mary Chesnut

Mary Boykin Chesnut (1823–1886) was an American writer noted for a book published as her Civil War diary, a “vivid picture of a society in the throes of its life-and-death struggle.” She described the war from within her upper-class circles of Southern slaveowner society but that encompassed all classes in her book. 

About Suzanne Toren

Suzanne Toren, award-winning narrator, has over thirty years of experience in narration. She was named a “Golden Voice” by AudioFile magazine in 2019. She has won the American Foundation for the Blind’s Scourby Award for Narrator of the Year, AudioFile magazine named her the 2009 Best Voice in Nonfiction & Culture, and she is the recipient of multiple Earphones Awards. She performs on and off Broadway and in regional theaters and has appeared on Law & Order and in various soap operas.

About C. Vann Woodward

C. Vann Woodward (1908–1999) was a renowned American historian and the author of many books, including Origins of the New South, 1877–1913, Reunion and Reaction: The Compromise of 1877 and the End of Reconstruction, The Strange Career of Jim Crow, The Battle for Leyte Gulf, and Thinking Back: The Perils of Writing History.

Reviews

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Quotes

“A Southern War and Peace.” Washington Post Book World

“One of the best firsthand records of the Confederate experience…Electrifying.” Newsweek

“A great epic drama of our greatest national tragedy.” New York Review of Books

“The best of all Civil War memoirs and one of the most remarkable eye-witness accounts to emerge from that or any other war.” New Republic

“C. Vann Woodward’s impressive edition guarantees that Mary Chesnut’s Civil War will take its rightful place as an American classic.” Christian Science Monitor Book Review

“Captures vividly the experience of war in the Old South, from the first hopeful days…to the ruinous end…The book teems with interesting portraits (of generals and society ladies, of maids and slaves), with reports of battles and balls, and with highly evocative descriptions of everyday scenes that bring the period to life.” Publishers Weekly

“Thanks to the judicious editing of C. Vann Woodward, the great Yale historian of the South, we can read nearly the whole of Mary Chesnut’s work and see precisely which passages came from the original journal of Civil War vintage and which were revised in later years. And this more authentic version is if anything more impressive as the account of an exceptional woman and the society she both represented and questioned.” Kirkus Reviews

Awards

  • Pulitzer Prize
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