Book Reviews

David S. Reynolds, “Deathbed Directive” (review of Gregory May’s A Madman’s Will: John Randolph, Four Hundred Slaves, and the Mirage of Freedom), Wall Street Journal, April 18, 2023.

David S. Reynolds, “The Remarkable Grimkes” (review of Kerri K. Greenridge’s A The Grimkes: The Legacy of Slavery in an American Family), New York Review of Books, March 9, 2023.

David S. Reynolds, “Disgrace at the North” (review of Philip Dray’s A Lynching at Port Jervis), Wall Street Journal, June 8, 2022.

David S. Reynolds, “In the Shadow of Slavery” (review-essay on Clint Smith’s How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America), New York Review of Books, February 22, 2022.

David S. Reynolds, “He Was No Moses” (review-essay on Robert S. Levine’s The Failed Promise and Brenda Wineapple’s The Impeachers), New York Review of Books, December 16, 2021.

David S. Reynolds, “Before the Civil War, America Was a ‘House Divided’ in More Ways Than One,” (review of Alan Taylor’s American Republics: ***A Continental History of the United States, 1783-1850), New York Times Book Review*, May 18, 2021.**

David S. Reynolds, “When Slaves Fled to Mexico“ (review essay on Alice Baumgartner’s South to Freedom: Runaway Slaves to Freedom and the Road to the Civil War) New York Review of Books, May 13, 2021.

David S. Reynolds, review of John Matteson’s A Worse Place than Hell: How the Civil War Battle of Fredrickburg Changed the Nation. Wall Street Journal, February 12, 2021.

David S. Reynolds, “I Do, I Do, I Do,…,” Review of Sarah Pearsall’s Polygamy: An Early American History, New York Review of Books, April 9, 2020.

David S. Reynolds, “When Republicans Were the Left-wing Party,” Wall Street Journal, February 2020; review of Fergus Bordewich’s Congress at War and LeeAnna Keith’s When It Was Grand

David S. Reynolds, Review of Richard Bell’s Stolen: Five Boys Kidnapped Intol Slavery and Their Astonishing Odyssey Home, Wall Street Journal, October 17, 2019 .

David S. Reynolds, essay-review on books about Catholicism and Anti-Catholicism in America, New York Review of Books, April 18, 2019.

David S. Reynolds, review of Becoming Lincoln, Wall Street Journal, February 16-17, 2019.

David S. Reynolds, Review of Sean Wilentz’s No Property in Man and Andrew Delbanco’s The War before the War, in Wall Street Journal (lead review), November 24, 2018.

**David S. Reynolds, Review of Joanne B. Freeman, The Field of Blood: Violence in Congress and the Road to the Civil War, in New York Times Book Review, September 30, 2018.**

David S. Reynolds, Essay-review on Lindsay Tuggle’s The Afterlives of Specimens: Science, Mourning, and Whitman’s Civil War and Walt Whitman’s Drum–Taps. The Complete 1865 Edition, edited by Lawrence Kramer, New York Review of Books, March 22, 2018.

David S. Reynolds, “Lincoln Ascending” [essay-review on Sidney Blumenthal’s Wrestling with His Angel: The Political Life of Abraham Lincoln, Vol. 2], Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, Summer 2017.

David S. Reynolds, “A Hemispheric View of Slavery” [essay-review on Matthew Karp’s This Vast Southern Empire], New York Review of Books, June 20, 2017.

David S. Reynolds, “The Hidden History of Slavery” (essay-review on Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing, Manisha Sinha’s The Slave’s Cause, and Stephen Oakes’s The Scorpion’s Sting) Kenyon Review,” May/June 2017.

David S. Reynolds, “Taking Old Abe to Task” (essay-review on Six Encounters with Lincoln: A President Confronts Democracy and Its Demons, by Elizabeth Brown Pryor), The American Scholar, Spring 2017.

David S. Reynolds, “When Darwin Was the Rage” (review of Randall Fuller’s The Book that Changed America), in The Wall Street Journal, January 22-22, 2017.

David S. Reynolds, “How America Went Racist: Our Ruinous Betrayal of Indians and Black Americans” (essay-review of Nicholas Guyatt’s Bind Us Apart: How Enlightened Americans Invented Racial Segregation), New York Review of Books, December 22, 2016.

Feature article on David S. Reynolds as book reviewer: “Why We Chose It” by David Lynn, Kenyon Review, July/August 2016.

David S Reynolds, Review of Justin Martin’s Rebel Souls: Whitman and America’s First Bohemians and Whitman among the Bohemians (edited by Joanna Levin), Kenyon Review, July/August 2016.

David S. Reynolds, “Abraham Lincoln and Friends,” review of Herndon on Lincoln (edited by Douglas Wilson and Rodney Davis) and Stephen Harrigan’s A Friend of Mr. Lincoln, Wall Street Journal, Jan 30-31 2016.

David S. Reynolds, “The Commander of Civil War History” [essay-review on James McPherson’s Embattled Rebel: Jefferson Davis as Commander in Chief and The War that Forged a Nation: Why the Civil War Still Matters], New York Review of Books, November 19, 2015.

David S. Reynolds, review of Jonathan M. Bryant, Dark Places of the Earth, Wall Street Journal, August 8, 2015

David S. Reynolds, review of Eric Foner, Gateway to Freedom: The Hidden History of the Underground Railroad, Wall Street Journal, January 16, 2015.

David S. Reynolds, review of Harold Holzer, Lincoln and the Power of the Press, New York Times Book Review, November 2, 2014.

David S. Reynolds, review of Greg Grandin, The Empire of Necessity: Slavery, Freedom, and Deception in the New World, in Wall Street Journal, February 6, 2014.

David S. Reynolds, review of Ecstatic Nation: Confidence, Crisis, and Compromise, 1848-1877, by Brenda Wineapple, in New York Times Book Review, August 11, 2013.

An Exchange on John Brown, between David S. Reynolds and Christopher Benfey, New York Review of Books, July 9, 2013.

David S. Reynolds, review of The Tribunal: Responses to John Brown and the Harpers Ferry Raid, edited by John Stauffer and Zoe Trodd, Wall Street Journal, December 4, 2012.

David S. Reynolds, review of Allen C. Guelzo’s Fateful Lightning: A New History of the Civil War and Reconstruction, in New York Times Book Review, July 1, 2012.

David S. Reynolds, essay- review of 5 books on the Civil War era [Adam Goodheart’s 1861, Amanda Foreman’s The World on Fire, Tony Horwitz’s Midnight Rising, David Goldfield’s America Aflame, and The Civil War: The First Year Told by Those Who Lived It], Journal of the Civil War Era, 2 (September 2012): 421-435.

David S. Reynolds, review of America’s Great Debate, by Fergus M. Bordewich. Wall Street Journal April 22, 2012.

David S. Reynolds, review of Midnight Rising: John Brown and the Raid that Sparked the Civil War, by Tony Horwitz. Wall Street Journal October 22, 2011.

David S. Reynolds, review of The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and Slavery, by Eric Foner. New York Times Book Review, October 3, 2010.

David S. Reynolds, review of Tocqueville’s Discovery of America, by Leo Damrosch. in New York Times Book Review, April 18, 2010.

David S. Reynolds, review of John Brown’s War Against Slavery, by Robert E. McGlone. New England Quarterly, 83 (March 2010): 148-150.

David S. Reynolds, Review of The State of Jones: The Small Southern County That Seceded from the Confederacy, by Sally Jenkins and John Stauffer. New York Times Book Review August 16, 2009.

David S. Reynolds, review of Capitol Men: The Epic Story of Reconstruction through the Eyes of America’s First Black Congressmen, by Philip Dray. New York Times Book Review September 28, 2008.

David S. Reynolds, essay-review of Joyce Carol Oates’s Wild Nights! Stories about the Last Days of Poe, Dickinson, Twain, James, and Hemingway and Christopher Benfey’s A Summer of the Hummingbirds: Love, Art, and Scandal in the Intersecting Worlds of Emily Dickinson, Mark Twain, Harriet Beecher Stowe, & Martin Johnson Heade, Kenyon Review (2009).

David S. Reynolds, review of I’ve Got a Home in Glory Land: A Lost Tale of the Underground Railroad, by Karolyn Smarz Frost. New York Times Book Review June 17, 2007.

David S. Reynolds, review of 1776, by David McCullough. New York Observer May 30, 2005.

David S. Reynolds, review of Harriet Jacobs, A Life, by Jean Fagan Yellin. New York Times Book Review July 11, 2004.

David S. Reynolds, review of Herman Melville, Volume II (1851-1891), by Hershel Parker. Journal of American History September 2003: 646-47.

David S. Reynolds, review of Savage Reprisals: Bleak House, Madame Bovary, Budenbrooks, by Peter Gay. New York Times Book Review August 4, 2002.

David S. Reynolds, review of Mother Jones: The Most Dangerous Woman in America, by Elliott J. Gorn. New York Times Book Review March 26, 2001.

David S. Reynolds, review of Still the New World: American Literature in a Culture of Creative Destruction, by Philip Fisher. New York Times Book Review October 18, 1999.

David S. Reynolds, review of The American Century, by Harold Evans. New York Times Book Review October 26, 1998.

David S. Reynolds, review of Genuine Reality: A Life of William James, by Linda Simon. New York Times Book Review March 15, 1998.

David S. Reynolds, review of The Lives of Anthony Burns, by Albert J. Von Frank. New York Times Book Review March 8, 1998.

David S. Reynolds, review of Inventing Mark Twain: The Lives of Samuel Langhorne Clemens, by Andrew Hoffmann. New York Times Book Review April 27, 1997.

David S. Reynolds, review of Americans: The Collision of Cultures, by Edward Countryman. New York Times Book Review June 30, 1996.

David S. Reynolds, review of Ambrose Bierce: Alone in Bad Company, by Roy Morris, Jr. New York Times Book Review February 18, 1996.

David S. Reynolds, review of Emerson: The Mind on Fire, by Robert D. Richardson. New York Times Book Review June 23, 1995.

David S. Reynolds, review of Walt Whitman’s Native Representations, by Ed Folsom. New England Quarterly 68 (September 1995): 305-6.

David S. Reynolds, review of The Civil War World of Herman Melville, by Stanton Garner. American Historical Review 100 (April 1995): 586-87.

David S. Reynolds, review of The Frontier in American Culture, by Richard White and Patricia Nelson Limerick. New York Times Book Review January 22, 1995.

David S. Reynolds, review of Lincoln in American Memory, by Merrill D. Peterson. New York Times Book Review June 26, 1994.

David S. Reynolds, review of The Centennial Essays, by Walt Whitman. Ed. Ed Folsom. Walt Whitman Quarterly Review 12 (Summer 1994): 57-8.

David S. Reynolds, review of Without Sin; the Rise and Fall of the Oneida Community, by Spencer Klaw. New York Times Book Review October 24, 1993.

David S. Reynolds, review of Dearest Beloved: The Hawthornes and the Making of the Middle-Class Family, by T. Walter Herbert. New York Times Book Review February 7, 1993.

David S. Reynolds, review of The Spectator and the City in Nineteenth-Century American Literature, by Dana Brand. Nineteenth-Century Literature 47 (March 1993): 505-507.

David S. Reynolds, review of This Brief Tragedy: Unraveling the Todd-Dickinson Affair, by John Evangelist Walsh. New York Times Book Review December 29, 1991.

David S. Reynolds, review of Confidence Men and Painted Women, by Karen Halttunen. The Journal of American History 12 (December 1989): 1477-78.

David S. Reynolds, review of European Revolutions and the American Literary Renaissance, by Larry J. Reynolds. The Journal of American History 12 (October 1989): 934-35.

David S. Reynolds, review of The Letters of Edith Wharton. Ed. R.W.B. Lewis and Nancy Lewis. Chicago Tribune July 14, 1988.

David S. Reynolds, review of The Unusable Past: Theory and the Study of American Literature, by Russell Reising’s American Literature 60 (Spring 1988): 109-11.

David S. Reynolds, review of Willa Cather: A Literary Life, by James Woodress. New York Times Book Review October 11, 1987.

David S. Reynolds, review of My Soul and I: The Inner Life of Walt Whitman, by David Cavitch. New York Times Book Rl;eview February 2, 1986.

David S. Reynolds, review of Fanny Wright: Rebel in America, by Celia Morris Eckhardt. New York Times Book Review April 22, 1984.

David S. Reynolds, review of Literary Democracy, by Larzer Ziff. Journal of American History 69 (June 1982), 152-153.

"Reynolds is a virtuoso writer."
-- Publishers Weekly

"Exemplary scholarship, not just for our time, but for all times."
-- Kirkus

“David S. Reynolds is a brilliant writer & historian of unusually broad scope. He is a profound scholar, combining history & literary criticism to examine our country on all levels, all the while writing fluidly so that his books are a joy to read. I like everything about Reynolds’ writing. Try one of his books and see what you think.”
-- Anne Rice, best-selling author.