What is Lorien Foote reading?

The current featured contributor at Writers Read: Lorien Foote, author of the newly released The Gentlemen and the Roughs: Violence, Honor, and Manhood in the Union Army.

Her entry begins:

I’ve been traveling a lot recently and asked some friends to lend me books that would be good reading to pass the time in airports and train stations. One gave me Interesting Times by Terry Pratchett, a novel that is part of a fantasy series set on Discworld. The hero is a coward, the barbarian horde is comprised of geriatrics, the wizards are at a university where neither students nor professors attend lectures, and the revolutionaries spout slogans about...[read on]

Lorien Foote is associate professor of history at the University of Central Arkansas and the author of Seeking the One Great Remedy: Francis George Shaw and Nineteenth-Century Reform.

About The Gentlemen and the Roughs, from the publisher:

During the Civil War, the Union army—like the society from which it sprang—appeared cohesive enough to withstand four years of grueling war against the Confederates and to claim victory in 1865. But fractiousness bubbled below the surface of the North’s presumably united front. Internal fissures were rife within the Union army: class divisions, regional antagonisms, ideological differences, and conflicting personalities all distracted the army from quelling the Southern rebellion.

In this highly original contribution to Civil War and gender history, Lorien Foote reveals that these internal battles were fought against the backdrop of manhood. Clashing ideals of manliness produced myriad conflicts when educated, refined, and wealthy officers (“gentlemen”) found themselves commanding a hard-drinking group of fighters (”roughs”)—a dynamic that often resulted in violence and even death. Challenges, fights, and duels were common. Based on extensive research into heretofore ignored primary sources—courts-martial records and regimental order books—The Gentlemen and the Roughs uncovers holes in our understanding of the men who fought the Civil War and the society that produced them.

Visit Lorien Foote's faculty webpage, and learn more about The Gentlemen and the Roughs: Violence, Honor, and Manhood in the Union Army.

Writers Read: Lorien Foote.

--Marshal Zeringue