Professor Emeritus
Education
Ph.D., University of Tennessee, Knoxville, 1983
Awards and Recognitions
- University of Tennessee College of Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professorship in Humanities for 2008-2010
- University of Tennessee College of Arts and Sciences Lindsay Young Professorship for 2002-2007
- UT Alexander Prize for Distinguished Research and Teaching, 2005
- UT Chancellor’s Award for Research and Creative Achievement, 2004
- University of Tennessee National Alumni Association Outstanding Teacher Award, 1999
Selected Publications
- A Massacre in Memphis: The Race Riot That Shook the Nation One Year after the Civil War (Hill & Wang/Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2013)
- The Black Experience in the Civil War South (Praeger, 2010)
- Firebrand of Liberty: The Story of Two Black Regiments That Changed the Course of the Civil War (W. W. Norton, 2008)
- A Year in the South: 1865: The True Story of Four Ordinary People Who Lived Through the Most Tumultuous Twelve Months in American History (HarperCollins, 2004)
- [with Paul H. Bergeron and Jeanette Keith], Tennesseans and Their History (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1999)
- Secessionists and Other Scoundrels: Selections from Parson Brownlow's Book (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1999)
- When the Yankees Came: Conflict and Chaos in the Occupied South, 1861-1865 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995; paperback edition, 1999)
- Middle Tennessee Society Transformed, 1860-1870: War and Peace in the Upper South (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1988)