| Book Reviews | The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 130.4

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| Book Reviews | The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 130.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Reviews

The Boundaries of American Political Culture in the Civil War Era. By Mark E. Neely Jr. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005. xiv, 159p. Illustrations, notes, selected bibliography, index. $29.95.)

This slender volume's brevity belies its ambition. In The Boundaries of Political Culture in the Civil War Era, Mark Neely seeks to challenge some of the most influential works of recent historiography; each of its four chapters addresses the thesis of a different work on the political history of the mid-nineteenth century: Glenn C. Altschuler and Stuart M. Blumin's Rude Republic (2000); Joel H. Silbey's The American Political Nation (1991); Iver Bernstein's The New York City Draft Riots (1990); and Jean H. Baker's Affairs of Party (1983). Neely's vision of the nature of politics in the Civil War era is framed by his critique of these works, though he is quick to point out, "only very good books stimulate debate and send us back to the sources to look further into historical questions" (pp. x–xi).

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