Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ruling Race: A History of American Slaveholders | 1982 | James Oakes | Buy |
| 2 | Slavery and Freedom: An Interpretation of the Old South | 1990 | James Oakes | Buy |
| 3 | The Oakes Diaries: Business, Politics, and the Family in Bury St Edmunds, 1778-1827 | 1991 | James Oakes | Buy |
| 4 | The Radical and the Republican: Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, and the Triumph of Antislavery Politics | 2007 | James Oakes | Buy |
| 5 | Of the People | 2009 | James Oakes | Buy |
| 6 | Freedom National: The Destruction of Slavery in the United States, 1861-1865 | 2012 | James Oakes | Buy |
| 7 | The Scorpion’s Sting: Antislavery and the Coming of the Civil War | 2014 | James Oakes | Buy |
| 8 | When You Walk Through A Storm: A heartbreaking true life story, chronicling how two people struggle for survival against all the odds. | 2021 | James Oakes | Buy |
| 9 | The Crooked Path to Abolition: Abraham Lincoln and the Antislavery Constitution | 2021 | James Oakes | Buy |
James Oakes’ non-fiction traces the history of slavery and abolition in the United States across nearly four decades of scholarship. The Ruling Race (1982) reframed the study of slaveholders, while Slavery and Freedom (1990) examined the ideological contradictions at the heart of the Old South.
His most acclaimed recent work includes Freedom National (2012), which won the Lincoln Prize, and The Crooked Path to Abolition (2021), which argues that the constitutional case against slavery was stronger and older than previously understood. Of the People (2009) is a broader American history textbook he co-authored for college courses.