Uploaded March 2022 | Updated September 2026, 19 hours ago
ELIZABETH R. VARON is Langbourne M. Williams Professor of American History at the University of Virginia and a member of the executive council of UVA's John L. Nau III Center for Civil War History. Varon grew up in northern Virginia. She received her PhD from Yale, and has held teaching positions at Wellesley College and Temple University. A specialist in the Civil War era and 19th-century South, Varon is the author of We Mean to be Counted: White Women and Politics in Antebellum Virginia (1998); Southern Lady, Yankee Spy: The True Story of Elizabeth Van Lew, A Union Agent in the Heart of the Confederacy (2003), Disunion!: The Coming of the American Civil War, 1789-1859 (2008) and Appomattox: Victory, Defeat and Freedom at the End of the Civil War (2013). Southern Lady, Yankee Spy won three book awards and was named one of the "Five Best" books on the "Civil War away from the battlefield" in the Wall Street Journal. Appomattox won the 2014 Library of Virginia Literary Award for Nonfiction, the 2014 Dan and Marilyn Laney Prize for Civil War History (Austin Civil War Roundtable), and the 2014 Eugene Feit Award in Civil War Studies of the New York Military Affairs Symposium, and was named one of Civil War Monitor's "Best Books of 2014" and one of National Public Radio's "Six Civil War Books to Read Now." Varon's public presentations include book talks at the Lincoln Bicentennial in Springfield; and at Gettysburg's Civil War Institute; and on C-Span's Book TV. Her most recent book, Armies of Deliverance: A New History of the Civil War, won the 2020 Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize and was named one of the Wall Street Journal's best books of 2019. She is currently working on a biography of James Longstreet, forthcoming with Simon & Schuster in 2023.
ELIZABETH R. VARON is Langbourne M. Williams Professor of American History at the University of Virginia and a member of the executive council of UVA's John L. Nau III Center for Civil War History. Varon grew up in northern Virginia. She received her PhD from Yale, and has held teaching positions at Wellesley College and Temple University. A specialist in the Civil War era and 19th-century South, Varon is the author of We Mean to be Counted: White Women and Politics in Antebellum Virginia (1998); Southern Lady, Yankee Spy: The True Story of Elizabeth Van Lew, A Union Agent in the Heart of the Confederacy (2003), Disunion!: The Coming of the American Civil War, 1789-1859 (2008) and Appomattox: Victory, Defeat and Freedom at the End of the Civil War (2013). Southern Lady, Yankee Spy won three book awards and was named one of the "Five Best" books on the "Civil War away from the battlefield" in the Wall Street Journal. Appomattox won the 2014 Library of Virginia Literary Award for Nonfiction, the 2014 Dan and Marilyn Laney Prize for Civil War History (Austin Civil War Roundtable), and the 2014 Eugene Feit Award in Civil War Studies of the New York Military Affairs Symposium, and was named one of Civil War Monitor's "Best Books of 2014" and one of National Public Radio's "Six Civil War Books to Read Now." Varon's public presentations include book talks at the Lincoln Bicentennial in Springfield; and at Gettysburg's Civil War Institute; and on C-Span's Book TV. Her most recent book, Armies of Deliverance: A New History of the Civil War, won the 2020 Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize and was named one of the Wall Street Journal's best books of 2019. She is currently working on a biography of James Longstreet, forthcoming with Simon & Schuster in 2023.
