1/12: Author Event – Scott Ellsworth Discusses Midnight on the Potomac

1/12: Civil War Round Table Meeting with Scott Ellsworth

Scott Ellsworth, author of the recent Midnight on the Potomac, will join us at St. Joseph Mercy Hospital (1st Floor Auditorium*) for a discussion, book reading, and signing event!

About the Book

Midnight on the Potomac: The Last Year of the Civil War, the Lincoln Assassination, and the Rebirth of America is a new and revealing look at the last year of the Civil War and the assassination of President Lincoln. Based on extensive research in often overlooked historical sources, the book presents compelling evidence that our portrait of John Wilkes Booth has been seriously flawed, while a sweeping Union victory was far from assured even during the war’s final, fraught months. Hailed by the Wall Street Journal as “a suspenseful narrative brimming with engaging insights”; an Amazon Editors Pick for Best History, and #2 on the Civil War Monitor’s Best-Selling Civil war books of 2025, author Scott Ellsworth will set the stage for a re-examination of the last, climatic year of the nation’s bloodiest war.

Described by one reviewer as “a historian with the soul of a poet,” Scott Ellsworth is a New York Times bestselling author of five books, including the winner of a PEN Book Award and a National Book Award longlist. Formerly a historian at the Smithsonian Institution, he has written about American history for The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Los Angeles Times, and has appeared on the TODAY Show, PBS’s The American Experience, CNN, Fox News, the BBC, and other media outlets. He lives in Ann Arbor where, for the past eighteen years, he’s taught at the University of Michigan.

*1st Floor Auditorium, St. Joseph Mercy Hospital; Admin. Bldg. & Educ. Center, 5305 Elliott Dr., Ann Arbor, MI