James Oakes is the author of several acclaimed books on slavery and the Civil War. His most recent book, Freedom National, won the Lincoln Prize and was a long-list selection for the National Book Award. He lives in New York City.

Books in order of publication:

  • The Ruling Race: A History of American Slaveholders, Knopf, 1982.
  • Larry J. Griffin; Don Harrison Doyle, eds. (1995).
  • Slavery and Freedom: An Interpretation of the Old South. W. W. Norton & Company. 1998. James Oakes (historian).
  • The Radical and the Republican: Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, and the Triumph of Antislavery Politics. W. W. Norton & Company. 2007.
  • Freedom National: The Destruction of Slavery in the United States, 1861-1865. W. W. Norton & Company. 2013.
  • The Scorpion’s Sting: Antislavery and the Coming of the Civil War, W.W. Norton & Company, 2014.
  • The Crooked Path to Abolition: Abraham Lincoln and the Antislavery Constitution, W.W. Norton & Company, forthcoming Jan. 12, 2021.