The Scottsdale Civil War Round Table presents “Lincoln and the War’s End” by John Waugh at 6:40 p.m. on Tuesday, October 18 at the Scottsdale Civic Center Library Auditorium.
Waugh is a journalist turned historian. He has contributed to various magazines and periodicals, including Civil War History, American Heritage, Civil War Times Illustrated, Columbiad, The Washington Post Book World, The New York Times, The New Republic, The Nation, The Los Angeles Times Magazine, The Boston Globe, The Boston Herald American, and Country Magazine.
His first book, The Class of 1846, won the New York Civil War Round Table’s Fletcher Pratt Literary Award for the best non-fiction book on the Civil War published in 1994. His five other major works are Reelecting Lincoln (1997), Surviving the Confederacy (2002), On the Brink of Civil War (2003), One Man Great Enough (2007), Lincoln and McClellan (2010), and Lincoln and the War’s End (2014). His shorter works include Sam Bell Maxey and the Confederate Indians, (1995), Last Stand in Mobile, (2001), Edwin Cole Bearss: History’s Pied Piper (2003), and 20 Good Reasons to Study the Civil War (2004).
Over the years he has also been a consultant to various establishments and agencies–National Archives and Records Administration, U. S. Department of Energy, U. S. Environmental Protection Agency, Atlantic Richfield Company, President’s Council on Environmental Quality, Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), and West Virginia
Public Radio. In 1972 he won the American Bar Association’s Silver Gavel Award for the best national reporting, for a series on American prisons.
He began writing history–books on the Civil War era–in 1989, and has since written and published twelve and is working on the thirteenth. Waugh believes that covering the past is not unlike covering the present. The only difference is that all his sources are dead. He greatly prefers it that way. It also means he can return to his favorite century, the 19th, on a daily basis.
The Scottsdale Civil War Round Table meets the third Tuesday of every month (except June, July & August) from 6:40 – 8:45 p.m. at the Scottsdale Civic Center Library (Auditorium) 3839 N Drinkwater Blvd Scottsdale. Speakers are comprised of well-known Civil War experts from around the country. The group supports battlefield preservation through the Civil War Trust. All are welcome. Please join them early from 5:30 – 6 p.m. for some social civil war discussion and friendly debate.
