Carol Berkin, Presidential Professor at Baruch College in New York, discusses her revelatory new book, *Civil War Wives*. It focuses on the life and times of three wives -- Julia Dent Grant,wife Of U.S. Grant, Varina Howell Davis, wife of Jefferson Davis, and Angelina Grimke Weld, American politician, lawyer, abolitionist and suffragist -- whose lives offer a unique window on to our national past. Berkin's many notable books include *Revolutionary Mothers: Women in the Struggle for America's Independence*, and *A Brilliant Solution: Inventing the American Constitution*.
Carol Berkin, professor of American history at Baruch College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, is the author of *A Brilliant Solution: Inventing the American Constitution, First Generations, and Jonathan Sewall.* She lives in New York City.