Harvard’s commencement on May 24, 2018

Necessary Trouble: Growing Up at Midcentury

A memoir of coming of age in a conservative Southern family in postwar America.


This Republic of Suffering

Chronicles the impact of the Civil War’s enormous death toll on the lives of nineteenth-century Americans.

New edition with new introduction forthcoming September 12, 2023.

Drew Gilpin Faust, President Emerita of Harvard University and the Arthur Kingsley Porter University Research Professor
Photo: Harvard’s commencement on May 24, 2018

Drew Gilpin Faust is a contributing writer at The Atlantic.