Good historical writing not only teaches the reader something new about the past, but also does so in a way that impacts their present. History has its home in the Humanities for a good reason: whatever a writer’s specific focus may be, at the end of the day–or at the end of the book–all good writing should address essential, humanity-defining questions. How different was their past from our present? What were they really like? What did they really think? How have we remembered them, and how should we remember them? And what historical evidence makes it all so?
Answering these questions in any form is the historian’s duty. Answering them engagingly, tactfully, and compellingly is the historian’s art. As a writer, Connor Williams shares the stories of the past to help his readers understand their places in the present. History is complicated, and the better one becomes at history, the more complex it gets. History also never ends; and it is only by knowing where we’ve been–as a culture, nation, and species–that we can accurately chart where we want to go.
Connor’s two current book projects–both under contract with St. Martin’s Press of Macmillan Publishing–take up these questions from two different aspects.
A Promise Delivered: The Naming Commission, Nine Army Bases, and Ten True American Heroes recounts the actions of the Congressional commission tasked with renaming nine of our nation’s storied military posts. By writing chapters on each of the new namesakes that the Naming Commission chose (based in part on feedback from tens of thousands of interested Americans) Williams and his co-author answer several questions simultaneously. What actions made these ten military men and women truly special, and worthy of commemoration? How did they navigate the challenges of their past, and why does their success matter for today? And just what makes a true American hero, anyway? The writing of this book is just wrapping up, and it should be released in 2025.
Our Domestic Enemy: The Confederate Insurrection and the Civil War that Saved Our Nation interrogates the faulty legends about Civil War history that continue to divide our society today. It does so by leapfrogging back over a hundred and fifty years of sentimentalized stories and takes readers back to the causes, courses, and consequences of the Confederate insurrection, centering us squarely in the actions and writings of the American people as they fought the bloodiest war in our nation’s history. It uses hard data and clear, unmitigated quotes to ask readers to reconsider how much legitimacy we lend to a movement that fought for perpetual enslavement, lost a tremendous amount of men and materiel in a surprising short amount of time, and never constituted the “half our country” that its apologists claim. This book is just getting started, and should be out in 2026.
Connor Williams 