Required Reading

Pure America: Eugenics and the Making of Modern Virginia

Elizabeth Catte, Ph.D. in Public History (’16)

HISTORICAL NONFICTION

Pure America links present-day economic and racial inequalities and the history of eugenics in America. According to Catte, Virginia elites in the early 20th century strove to maintain racial and class hierarchies under the veneer of scientific and humanitarian progress. She contends that the state’s 1924 Sterilization Act, which allowed doctors to sterilize institutionalized patients without their consent, was intended to protect white racial purity and that the 1924 Racial Integrity Act buttressed whiteness by preventing interracial marriage. The book received praise in the Wall Street Journal and New York Times, and Publishers Weekly named it among its best books of 2021. Catte also wrote the highly publicized What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia.

Gettysburg by Morning

Randy O’Brien, B.S. in English (’76)

HISTORICAL FICTION

There are over 200 documented cases of women who dressed as men to fight in the Civil War. Gettysburg by Morning is the first novel that explores this phenomenon from the battlefield to the White House. Historical characters like Abraham Lincoln, Mary Todd Lincoln, George Custer, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and others make reading this story like walking hand-in-hand with history. O’Brien is a retired awardwinning radio journalist. He was the news director of WMOT-FM for three decades, reporting hard news and features. In addition, he was an adjunct writing instructor.

Faith in Freedom

Andrew R. Polk, Associate Professor, Department of History

AMERICAN RELIGIOUS HISTORY

In Faith in Freedom, Polk argues that U.S. Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, and Dwight D. Eisenhower, working with politicians, advertising executives, and military public relations experts, exploited denominational religious affiliations and beliefs in order to unite Americans during World War II and then the early Cold War. By assessing the ideas, policies, and actions of these three U.S. presidents and their White House staffs, Polk sheds light on the origins of the ideological, religious, and partisan divides that describe the American polity today.

To Care for the Sick and Bury the Dead

Leigh Ann Gardner, M.A., Public History (’12)

AFRICAN AMERICAN HISTORY

Gardner, a grants manager at Vanderbilt University Medical Center and longtime interpretative specialist with the Tennessee Civil War National Heritage Area at MTSU’s Center for Historic Preservation, writes about African American lodges like the Sons of Ham and Prince Hall Freemasons that created a social safety net for members across Tennessee during their heyday between 1865 and 1930. Such groups provided members with sick benefits and assurance of a proper burial, among other advantages. Their legacy endures in the form of the cemeteries the lodges left behind.