About this item
As tension over slavery and western expansion threatened to break the US into civil war, the Southern states found themselves squeezed between two nearly irreconcilable realities: the survival of the Confederate economy would require the importation of more slaves - a practice banned in America since 1807 - but the existence of the Confederacy itself could not be secured without official recognition from Great Britain, who would never countenance reopening the Atlantic slave trade. How, then, could the first be achieved without dooming the possibility of the second? The unlikely man at the rolling center of the intrigue was Robert Bunch, an American-born Englishman who had maneuvered his way to the position of British consul in Charleston, South Carolina, and grew to loathe slavery and the righteousness of its practitioners.
About the Author
Christopher Dickey is a renowned war correspondent, historian, and thriller writer, an authority on terrorism, and a memoirist. He is the Paris-based foreign editor of The Daily Beast, and is a contributor to NBC/MSNBC News. Chris also has been a frequent commentator on CNN, the BBC, and NPR. He was formerly a bureau chief for Newsweek in Paris and Cairo, and for The Washington Post in Central America and the Middle East.
Chris's most recent work of non-fiction is "Our Man in Charleston: Britain's Secret Agent in the Civil War South," published in 2015. It was a New York Times best-seller, and is due out in paperback in July 2016. Pulitzer prize-winning historian James M. McPherson described it as "an engrossing account of diplomatic derring-do," and Kirkus, in a starred review, called it, flatly, "a great book." The many, many editorial reviews and the enthusiastic reports by Amazon readers speak for themselves.
At a time when Americans are searching for a deeper understanding of their history as it affects today's burning questions of race and politics, "Our Man in Charleston" offers startling insights into the grim narrative of slavery, the matter of states' rights, and the foundations of racism in the United States as viewed by an outsider in the heart of the Southern "slavocracy." A compelling true story, deeply researched and thoroughly documented, it tells of one young British diplomat's ultimately successful effort to prevent the Crown from supporting the Confederacy. Had British military might backed the secessionists, especially in the early days of the conflict, that would have been checkmate, game over for the Union. But that did not happen, and this narrative, much of it based on "private and confidential" correspondence never before published, shows why.
Glowing editorial notices have come from several authoritative Civil War historians: Amanda Foreman ("A World on Fire") , Harold Holzer ("Lincoln and the Power of the Press") and Howard Jones ("Blue and Grey Diplomacy") have all praised the book. Great modern writers - Joan Didion, Pat Conroy and Geraldine Brooks, among them - found "Our Man" a compelling narrative. (Didion said, memorably, it is "a perfect book about an imperfect spy.") Well-known ex-CIA operative Robert Baer called it "the best espionage book I've read."
Chris's earlier works include "Securing the City: Inside America's Best Counterterror Force - The NYPD," chosen by The New York Times Book Review as one of the notable books of 2009. His novel "The Sleeper" was acclaimed by the Times as "a first-rate thriller." His "Summer of Deliverance," another "notable book of the year," was described beautifully by Elizabeth Hardwick as "a heartbreaking, eloquent me
