Reconstruction is such a fascinating time period – in a terrible, terrible way. There's just so much "what could have been" around it, though as your quote says, maybe there wasn't any way to go about that could have made the racial progress actually work.

I read Capitol Men: The Epic Story of Reconstruction Through the Lives of the First Black Congressmen by Philip Dray a few years ago, which is probably mostly the same information (though with a different focus) as The Thin Light of Freedom, but it's really stuck in my mind ever since.