About the book
The month of April 1865, Jay Winik argues, could have broken the United States apart and instead saved it. His account of the Civil War's final days takes in the fall of Richmond, a Southern scheme to keep fighting as guerrillas, Lee's retreat and the surrender at Appomattox, then Lincoln's assassination five days later and a plot that came close to wiping out the Union's leadership. It goes on to coup fears in the North, failed negotiations and further bloodshed in the South, and the first steps toward national reconciliation. Winik sets those thirty days in a wider historical frame, with profiles of the leading figures. It reached number one on the New York Times best seller list.
Morgan Housel points to the stark leap of that moment, with the war ending and the president assassinated in the same week, and calls Winik a rare historian who is also a great writer.
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April, 1865: The Month That Saved America. I like the saying, “History doesn’t crawl; it leaps.” Few periods saw such a stark leap as when the Civil War ended and Abraham Lincoln was assassinated within the same week. Jay Winik is one of the few hardcore historians who’s also a great writer.
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