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Scott Ellsworth, author portrait

Scott Ellsworth

American
Scott Allen Ellsworth is an American writer and historian. He is the author of The Secret Game (2015), The Ground Breaking (2021), and other award-winning works of narrative non-fiction. Ellsworth and his research into the Tulsa race massacre are credited with ensuring the tragedy has become embedded in popular culture.
On LuvemBooks, we've reviewed Midnight on the Potomac.
1
Books Reviewed
Cover of Midnight on the Potomac
Midnight on the Potomac

4.4/5

reader rating · 814 ratings

Scott Ellsworth's Midnight on the Potomac: The Last Year of the Civil War is a narrative history that spans the final, desperate year of the Civil War — from the spring of 1864, when Northern war-weariness made Lincoln's reelection far from assured, to the April 1865 surrender of Robert E. Lee and the assassination of Lincoln at Ford's Theatre. Published by Dutton in July 2025, the book draws on obscure contemporary accounts and long-ignored scholarship to challenge the conventional portrait of John Wilkes Booth as a lone, disgruntled actor, arguing instead that Booth operated in close collaboration with agents of the Confederate Secret Service. Publishers Weekly called it "a passionate and elegant chronicle of one of the most dramatic years in American history, torn agonizingly between triumph and tragedy."

Reviewed Apr 5, 2026

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Authors Like Scott Ellsworth
Howard Zinn

Howard Zinn

History
Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States complements Ellsworth's history by shifting focus from military and political elites to enslaved and working-class voices.
1 book reviewed
A People's History of the United States
William L. Shirer

William L. Shirer

History
William L. Shirer's The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich stretches Ellsworth's scale of political conspiracy and state violence across an entire era of regime collapse.
1 book reviewed
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
Barbara W. Tuchman

Barbara W. Tuchman

History
Barbara W. Tuchman’s The Guns of August brings the same cinematic, multi-perspective narrative history to the catastrophic opening weeks and decisive miscalculations of World War I.
1 book reviewed
The Guns of August: The Pulitzer Prize-Winning Classic About the Outbreak of World War I
T

Thurston Clarke

History
Thurston Clarke’s Ask Not shares Scott Ellsworth’s technique of capturing a pivotal presidential moment and making a single political event resonate far beyond its immediate hour.
1 book reviewed
Ask Not: The Inauguration of John F. Kennedy
Yuval Noah Harari

Yuval Noah Harari

History

Yuval Noah Harari is an Israeli medievalist, military historian, public intellectual, and popular science writer.

1 book reviewed
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
Matt Haig

Matt Haig

History

Matt Haig is an English author and journalist.

1 book reviewed
How to Stop Time