Description: David Blight takes his readers back to the Civil War's centennial celebration to determine how Americans made sense of the suffering, loss, and liberation a century earlier. He shows how four of America's most incisive writers-Robert Penn Warren, Bruce Catton, Edmund Wilson, and James Baldwin-explored the gulf between remembrance and reality.
Brief description: David W. Blight is Sterling Professor of American History and Director of the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition at Yale University. He is the author of many books, including Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom, which won the Pulitzer Prize for History, and Race and Reunion (Harvard), which received the Bancroft Prize and Frederick Douglass Prize, among other awards.
Review Quotes: Perceptive, eloquent, and timely, Blight's book should find a wide and appreciative audience.--Gary Gallagher, author of The Union War