About the Speaker

Dr. Cook is Professor of American History at the University of Sussex. Cook is primarily a scholar of the Civil War Era, yet his work successfully analyzes the interrelationship between race, politics, and society in both the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He has published on topics ranging from the evolution of the Republican Party in Iowa from 1838-78 and the Secession Winter of 1860-61 to the American Civil War Centennial and the African-American struggle for civil rights in the twentieth century. His most recent book, Civil War Senator, provides a biography of influential Republican Senator William Pitt Fassenden and was published in 2011 by the Louisiana State University Press. Cook is currently working on a comprehensive history of American Civil War memory that spans the time period from Appomattox to the Civil War Sesquicentennial.