Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    From $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    April 1865: The Month That Saved America
    April 1865: The Month That Saved America
    April 1865: The Month That Saved America
    Audiobook16 hours

    April 1865: The Month That Saved America

    Written by Jay Winik

    Narrated by Jay Winik

    4/5

    ()

    Switch to ebook

    About this audiobook

    This New York Times best-seller from noted historian and acclaimed author Jay Winik forever changes common perceptions of the final month of the American Civil War. April 1865 could have destroyed the nation. Instead, it saved it. As April begins, the battered Confederate capital of Richmond falls to the Union Army. Robert E. Lee surrenders his forces to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox one week later. In good spirits and sensing the war's end, President Abraham Lincoln attends a comedic play--and is assassinated. Simultaneously, Secretary of State William Seward is brutally attacked, but survives. Along with fears that remaining Confederate soldiers will break into guerrilla bands, these events threaten to plunge America into turmoil. But it is not to be. Winik's engrossing narrative sweeps readers along from one incredible moment to the next until, remarkably, peace is reached. A provocative and deeply researched account, this modern classic is a major reassessment of the 30 most pivotal days in United States history.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateApr 24, 2015
    ISBN9781490633770
    Author

    Jay Winik

    Jay Winik is the author of the New York Times bestseller April 1865. He is a senior scholar of history and public policy at the University of Maryland and a regular contributor to The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. He lives in Chevy Chase, Maryland.

    More audiobooks from Jay Winik

    Related to April 1865

    Related audiobooks

    United States History For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    Related categories

    Reviews for April 1865

    4/5

    269 ratings19 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 3/5
      Better researched than written, and better written than read. Still, worth the time.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      Very interesting perspective to focus on the lead-up to this complex and pivotal year in US history.
    • 4/5
      Great information but the audio quality is atrocious and needs to be fixed.
    • 4/5
      A fascinating book on the last month of the Civil War. There were dozens of nuggets from this book that I will take with me as nice stories to share with my students. My favorite chapter was easily the one that dealt with the surrender of Lee's army and the meeting of Lee and Grant. The author writes with grace and puts you into the house at Appomattox. The level of respect these two men had for each other after spending months trying to defeat the other is incredible. Great stuff.

      My main criticism of this book is that only about half of it really talks about April of 1865. Every time a major figure is mentioned, the author takes 5-10 pages to go back and tell that person's biography. I understand that some context is necessary to fully tell the story of the end of the War, but I felt that it slowed down the story and gave us more than we really needed. Also, unless you are very new to the Civil War, the background stories do not truly provide any vital information.

      I would recommend this read to any Civil War lovers.
    • 5/5
      I read April 1865 by Jay Winik during June 2102. The book was excellent, and summed up quite well why the Union had to win the Civil War. The story builds to the April 1865 climax, which embraced by the triumph of Appomattox and the despair of Lincoln' assassination. Winik is a great historian, who focuses on bite-sized portions of history rather than broad sweeps. I also read 1944: FDR and the Year That Changed History by Jay Winik. Similar "bite-sized" history.

      No less satisfying was The Proud Tower, by Barbara Tuchman. This is the "broad sweep"approach, which chronicled the deterioration of Europe during "La Belle Epoque", the period from 1890-1914.
    • 5/5
      Most people know that Lincoln was assassinated in April 1865, and that Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox that same month. What most people don't know (but I learned from Winik's excellent book) is that the military and political leadership of both the Union and the Confederacy were involved in momentous decisions in April that helped bring the war to an end, and bring the country back together. These were decisions that, had they been made differently, could've resulted in catastrophe for our nation. Even if the Union had won the war, and the South readmitted, our identity as a unified country might have been in jeopardy. As Winik points out, using contemporary examples, some countries and regions never fully recover from civil wars. To increase the probability of long-lasting peace, Lincoln and Grant chose to disregard the railings of those who would bring shame and severe punishment on the heads of their conquered enemy. Though Jefferson Davis was all for a last-ditch attempt at preserving the Confederacy by sending the army into the hills for prolonged guerrilla warfare, Lee chose the high road, knowing the impact of a sustained war would only make matters far worse than they already were. Winik covers both the strengths and faults of Lincoln, Grant, Lee, Sherman, Johnson, Davis, and Forrest, and shows that despite these faults, they made the decisions at the end of the war that enabled the U.S. to come back together.

      The only thing I wish Winik had not omitted was a discussion of Lincoln's presidential pardons for high-ranking Confederate officers and officials, and how that played out with Andrew Johnson once he assumed the presidency. I believe Lincoln's policies in this regard played an important role in achieving peace, and Johnson's policies almost aborted this.

      For a different but equally engaging account of events in April and May 1865, I highly recommend James L. Swanson's Bloody Crimes: The Chase for Jefferson Davis and the Death Pageant for Lincoln's Corpse.
    • 4/5
      One thing we history buffs love is a big, thick book on a subject we love, the kind of deep dive that requires us to plow through hundreds upon hundreds of pages. APRIL 1865, THE MONTH THAT SAVED AMERICA by Jay Winik, is not that kind of history book, and that is just fine. Coming in at just under 400 pages, this is the kind of read that people who can’t manage detailed descriptions of troop movements, battlefield strategy, and lots of exposition will enjoy, while at the same time, satisfy those who have exhausted Bruce Catton and Shelby Foote, but still can’t resist going back to the American Civil War one more time. As per the title, Winik’s book deals with the last month of the war, which saw the fall of Richmond, Lee’s surrender at Appomattox, Lincoln’s assassination, the capitulation of the last major Confederate forces in North Carolina, and the first halting steps toward a national reconciliation after four years of endless bloodshed, and furious rancor. In the popular imagination, the Civil War ended with the surrender of Robert E. Lee to Ulysses S. Grant in the parlor of the McLean house in Appomattox, Virginia on April 9th, 1865; the rest of the Confederate armies followed Lee’s example, disbanding, with everyone going home, resolving to be one nation again, one filled with good Americans. But Winik sets out to prove this a gross simplification, and that if things had gone just a little different, if revenge and retribution had triumphed in the hearts of the North, or resistance and defiance had steeled the backs of the South, then American history would have been much different.

      The book makes the case that by April of 1865, the Confederacy was on its knees, with Grant’s army at the gates of Richmond, and Sherman’s forces marching into North Carolina, but that it was far from beaten, and years of guerrilla warfare, and a bitter resistance to Federal occupation, was a very real option for the Confederate forces still in the field. This kind of war, which would have resulted in unimaginable destruction and loss of life, did hold the possibility of victory for the South, if the North could ultimately be convinced that the price was too great to keep on fighting year after year. Whether this would happen or not, rested not only in the hands of Lee and Grant, but also Lincoln and Jefferson Davis, William T. Sherman and Joseph E. Johnston, and even disreputable characters like Nathan Bedford Forrest, and downright evil ones, like John Wilkes Booth. Winik labors hard to tell us who they were, what brought them to be where they were, and to hold such responsibility at that place and that time, and why what they did matters so much, even after more than a century and a half.

      I think Winik makes his points well, giving us not only the who and the where, but very much the why, specifically why the reconciliation that occurred, bitter and grudging on behalf of some, in the final month of the war came about. That these men who fought each other so hard, so long, both Confederate and Union, were sick and tired of war, Winik makes plain, that in their hearts, their fondest desire was to go home to their families, and never again hear a gun fired in anger. And upon this desire to be done with the bloody business of slavery and secession, a new sense of nationhood took root in the United States. That is far from an original conclusion, but I have not seen it better asserted than in Winik’s book.
      This book is as much a civics lesson as it is a recounting of history. One can easily quarrel with Winik’s conclusions, as some reviewers have over his handling of slavery, and the challenges of Reconstruction are given only a quick pass, as others have also pointed out, many feeling that this is the real story. These are contentious subjects, and button pushers for many, proving yet again, as William Faulkner said, “The past is not dead, it’s not even past.”
      Jay Winik wrote APRIL 1865 twenty years ago now, when America was still enjoying the aftermath of the Cold War; and for me, the cheery conclusion of the book reads like something written before 9/11, the long wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Great Recession, before the ferocious tribalism of 21st Century politics. These days we live in virtuous times, where the compromises and hard fought decisions of the past are disdained and dismissed. The complexities and paradoxes of the Civil War have no place in the public square or popular culture. Men who lived and died, and gave their last full measure for a country they loved as much as anyone alive today are found wanting by a modern morality, and judged harshly. APRIL 1865, whatever its faults, is a book that tries to make us understand a very difficult piece of American history, the kind of understanding that leads to common ground, something earlier generations of Americans knew and shared with one another; something forgotten, but perhaps yet remembered.
    • 3/5
      A snapshot of the end of the grand struggle. The maps don't amount to much, but if you're looking for a quick refresher, much tilted towards the south, you will find this book interesting.
    • 3/5
      An interesting concept for a book, and one that seemed to be a refreshing take on the end of the Civil War. Does a good job at illustrating the circumstances around the Civil War, and provides good mini-biographies of many of the major players.

      However, the author has made some egregious factual errors (two general Longstreets?), which detract from the book as a whole. Some interpretations of events are also suspect.

      Not a bad book, but one that could use some revision and improvements.
    • 5/5
      This is an excellent review of the status of the Civil War at its very end. Winik covers the political as well as the military aspects of the period and describes the rather unique path America took to uniting the states into a nation.
    • 3/5
      At the end of the Civil War, it is startling that so much occurred in the "final" month. The Confederate Army, led by Robert E. Lee, made one last ditch effort to elude the Union forces of Ulysses Grant but on April 9, 1865 surrendered at Appomattox Court House. Less than a week later, Abraham Lincoln lies dead, assassinated by John Wilkes Booth and Andrew Johnson is the new President. Confederate General Johnston disobeyed Jefferson Davis' orders to fight on and surrendered to Sherman.



      The end of hostilities came in 1865 and possibly, Lincoln would have agreed with Nathan Bedford Forrest, a Confederate General, when he said "You have been good soldiers, you can be good citizens. Obey the laws, preserve your honor, and the government to which you have surrendered can afford to be and will be magnanimous."

      This book relates the details of these events as well as the background that brought about these results. However, IMHO, it is not well written. If this book is to be constituted as a book of historical fact, then it needs to be severely edited. There are far too many personal observations and conclusions interspersed throughout as well as a jumpy writing style. The author frequently leaves one thought process hanging moving on to another and then jumps back to where he left off. I have no doubt that Professor Winik has researched his topic diligently, however, I believe that this book of 606 pages with another 101 of footnotes could have been more concise if the author's opinions had been eliminated and the conclusions left to be evaluated by the reader with just the facts stated.
    • 5/5
      APRIL 1865 is a one of the best history book I ever read.

      Through detail and imagery Jay Winik brings events and characters to life; and tells an emotionally moving story, partly because he he able to see things from different perspectives and show that there is not always black or white.

      In addition, Winik clearly has a take on the forces that drive history. (His book, therefore, has a message. I won't give it away.)
    • 4/5
       It’s unbelievable how much hangs on the simplest details. An error in a shipping order, an individual’s mood, these things can affect the fate of a nation. In April 1865 we’re given an in-depth look at the final days of the Civil War and the resonating effect they had on the USA.

      One of the things that stood out to me was how vital the character of the leaders was. If Grant or Lee or some of the others had wanted the war to continue they could have made very different choices. They men on both sides truly wanted peace in the end and their magnanimous actions prevented further bloodshed.

      Before reading this I had a pretty good grasp of both Lincoln and Lee’s personal histories, but I knew very little about Grant’s background. This book expanded my knowledge on all three men and gave me a much better understanding of the parts they all played. It also taught me just how controversial some of their decisions were.

      Winik’s voice worked well for me. He balanced the details and the big picture, giving just enough of both. He focused on individual’s motivations, not just outcomes. He delved farther back, into the creation of our nation and Jefferson’s role in that, to set the stage for the Civil War. If you want to learn more about the Civil War and America’s history, this book does a wonderful job.
    • 5/5
      April 1865 is about the end of the Civil War. It describes the history that lead to the particular events that occurred, starting with the constitution and continuing through the final surrender. At every step, the lecturer discusses what it means to the nation, as a whole.

      Jay Winik, the author and lecturer, is a professor of history and has served in national security. His work has involved him in numerous civil wars around the globe.

      I wasn't sure what to make of this, I picked it up at Barnes and Noble during one of their 75%-off sales. My first impression wasn't strong, the lecturer was almost monotonic and the content seemed weak. But that impression was quickly replaced when he provided, not just the historical facts, but full background and motivations; then he made it all sound interesting!

      Jay Winik builds the story mostly chronologically, discussing each of a large number of major characters. For each, he provides a background, discusses strengths and weaknesses, and his position in the power and political pictures of the period. He made the people come to life, they were no longer names in a book, but real people. He brought the struggles, defined the relationships between the different people, and build their personalities.

      There is so much information that we never learned, I strongly recommend this lecture series for anyone interested in history. For any US Civil War buffs, it is a must.
    • 1/5
      Overwritten and overwrought.
    • 5/5
      Excellent, Excellent, Excellent.
      If you don't think history can turn on a dime, this book will change your mind. One of the best I've ever read on the subject...and I'm a bit of a buff, so I do not say that lightly.
    • 5/5
      A fast paced bio-history of the month that altered the course not only of American history, but of world history.
      In "April 1865: The Month That Saved America", author Jay Winik breaks down the aforementioned month into the events that took places and the central characters that participated in each event during the month. The entire book is not all about what took place during the fourth month of ’65; the author gives the reader history of a particular subject when needed or required. I found Winik's writing style is very readable and unrelenting. He keeps the imagination fully engaged with the what-ifs, what could have beens, and what was.
      I consider this to be a must for any American Civil War enthusiast, history buff, or those who just enjoy a good book.
    • 5/5
      Incredible achievement. Makes one almost wish for a time machine to experience such an extraordinary month. Broadens the spotlight on Lincoln's assassination, showing that it was far more extensive and had other victims. Wilkes' plan was to decapitate the entire U.S. government in a single evening - and he nearly succeeded.
    • 5/5
      Great book. Reviews the events of April 1865. Lots of amaizing interesting stories. Possible Gorrila Warfare. Amzaing cirtumstances that if only one had been different could have swing the outcome of the war.