"In a forceful but humane narrative, former soldier and head of the West Point history department Ty Seidule's Robert E. Lee and Me challenges the myths and lies of the Confederate legacy-and explores why some of this country's oldest wounds have never healed. Ty Seidule grew up revering Robert E. Lee. From his southern childhood to his service in the U.S. Army, every part of his life reinforced the Lost Cause myth: that Lee was the greatest man who...

During the Civil War, its devastating aftermath, and the decades following, many southern white women turned to writing as a way to make sense of their experiences. Combining varied historical and literary sources, Sarah Gardner argues that women served as guardians of the collective memory of the war and helped define and reshape southern identity.
Gardner considers such well-known authors as Caroline Gordon, Ellen Glasgow, and Margaret Mitchell...

David Blight takes his readers back to the centennial celebration of the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation to determine how Americans then made sense of the suffering, loss, and liberation that had wracked the United States a century earlier. --from publisher description.