Readalikes: If you enjoyed May's selection . . .

If you enjoyed Our Man in Charleston: Britain's Secret Agent in the Civil War South by Christopher Dickey, then you might also like these books and films suggested by our discussion group members:

Books--Nonfiction
Junius and Albert's Adventures in the Confederacy: A Civil War Odyssey by Peter Carlson
This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War by Drew Gilpin Faust
Slaves in the Family by Edward Ball
Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War by Tony Horwitz
Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II by Douglas A. Blackmon
River of Dark Dreams: Slavery and Empire in the Cotton Kingdom by Walter Johnson
The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism by Edward E. Baptist
Empire of Cotton: A Global History by Sven Beckert
Lincoln and the Politics of Slavery: The Other Thirteenth Amendment and the Struggle to Save the Union by Daniel W. Crofts
Weevils in the Wheat: Interviews with Virginia Ex-Slaves by Charles L. Perdue and Thomas E. Barden
The Road to Disunion (2 vol.) by William W. Freehling
The Grimke Sisters from South Carolina: Pioneers for Women's Rights and Abolition by Gerda Lerner
Amazing Grace: William Wilberforce and the Heroic Campaign to End Slavery by Eric Metaxas

Books--Fiction
The Known World by Edward P. Jones
Sacred Hunger by Barry Unsworth
Middle Passage by Charles Johnson

Films
Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North by produced and directed by Katrina Browne

May Not Fiction Book Discussions

Many of the world's great events are orchestrated as much by the quiet work of diplomats as by the heroic acts of high-ranking military and political officials. Our Man in Charleston: Britain's Secret Agent in the Civil War South by Christopher Dickey tells the story of one such diplomat, Robert Bunch, the British consul in Charleston, SC, as the South seceded from from the Union and the Civil War ensued.

Dickey is the Paris-based world news editor for The Daily Beast. Previously he worked for The Daily Beast and Newsweek as Paris Bureau Chief and Middle East Editor, and before that for The Washington Post as Cairo Bureau Chief and Central America Bureau Chief. He is also a member of the Council on Foreign Affairs. He is perhaps ideally suited to help readers identify with the work of foreign diplomats and correspondents, showing the adroitness, sensitivity, and forbearance required to represent the interests of one nation while living in another. Dickey portrays Bunch as "energetic and perceptive, with an acid wit when he was among those few people he genuinely took into his confidence, and his persistence could be annoying. An ambitious man, he had spent years maneuvering to get posted as Her Majesty's consul somewhere . . . " (p. 9). He landed in the hotbed of Southern secession, which was driven by the South's economic dependence on slavery and by its belligerent and maniacal insistence on the moral right of the institution of slavery. Bunch, "ever a mix of moralist and careerist" (p.99), possessed of a "sense of justice and of irony" (p. 326), despised the institution of slavery and his Charleston neighbors' complacent reliance upon it, yet he managed to live a double life, earning their trust and respect while sending intelligence back to Britain that would ultimately foil their plans to recruit the official support of Britain for the new Confederate government.

Regarding his choice of Bunch as his subject, Dickey told AMFM Magazine interviewer John Wisniewski,

In the person of Her Majesty’s Consul Robert Bunch, our man in Charleston, I discovered an outside observer writing secret and confidential dispatches that cut through the rationalizations about slavery, States’ rights and Southern civilization that many Americans still consider historical verities. He saw the mind of the South for what it was in 1860, and what he saw was deeply disturbing to him as, indeed, it should be to us.

What do you think? Did you come to understand something about the Civil War through Robert Bunch's point of view that you might not have learned otherwise? Does Bunch seem to you to be more of a moralist or more of a careerist? Would he have been as effective if he had been less of either? Did Bunch really make a crucial difference in the lead up to the Civil War? Boston Globe reviewer Matthew Price says,

On one level, Dickey has written a spicy historical beach read, chock-full of memorable characters and intrigue. But into this page-turning entertainment, Dickey has smuggled a thoughtful examination of the geopolitical issues of the day.

Did you enjoy reading Our Man in Charleston? What made it a good read for you?

We hope you will join the discussion: Tuesday, May 3, at 6:30 p.m. at Main Library; Thursday, May 19, at 11:00 a.m. at West Ashley Branch Library; and here on the blog.