She is the author of six books, including "Mothers of Invention: Women of the Slaveholding South in the American Civil War" (1996), for which she won both the Society of American Historians Francis Parkman Prize and the Avery O. Craven Award from the Organization of American Historians in 1997. Her other works include "James Henry Hammond and Old South," a biography of James Henry Hammond, Governor of South Carolina from 1842 to 1844. "This Republic of Suffering" (2008) was a critically acclaimed exploration of how the United States' understanding of death was shaped by the high losses during the Civil War. It was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award.