SCRANTON — James McPherson, a historian who won the Pulitzer Prize for his comprehensive one-volume history of the Civil War, “Battle Cry of Freedom,” will deliver the Lackawanna County Library System’s 2015 American Masters Lecture at 7 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 5 at the Scranton Cultural Center.
McPherson is the author of 20 books and editor of another 10. Most are about the era of the American Civil War. His most recent book, published in 2015, is “The War That Forged a Nation: Why the Civil War Still Matters.”
The title of Dr. McPherson’s talk in Scranton will be “Abraham Lincoln, Jefferson Davis, and the End of the Civil War.”
His books have won several prizes, most notably the Pulitzer Prize in History (1989) for “Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era,” and two Lincoln Prizes (1998 and 2009) for “For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War” and “Tried by War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief.”
He has served as president of both the Society of American Historians and The American Historical Association. He is an elected member of the American Philosophical Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, founded respectively by Benjamin Franklin and John Adams. In 2007 he was awarded the first Pritzker Prize for lifetime achievement in military writing.
Free tickets for the event can be obtained by showing a library card at the Abington Community Library or the Dalton Community Library or can be reserved online at lclshome.org.
