The Civil War in Popular Culture: Memory and Meaning

Dividing the nation for four years, the American Civil War resulted in 750,000 casualties and forever changed the country's destiny. The conflict continues to resonate in our collective memory, and U.S. economic, cultural, and social structures still suffer the aftershocks of the nation's largest and most devastating war. Nearly 150 years later, portrayals of the war in books, songs, cinema, and other cultural media continue to draw widespread attention and controversy.

In The Civil War in Popular Culture: Memory and Meaning, editors Lawrence A. Kreiser Jr. and Randal Allred analyze American depictions of the war across a variety of mediums, from books and film, to monuments and battlefield reunions, to reenactments and board games. This collection examines how battle strategies, famous generals, and the nuances of Civil War politics translate into contemporary popular culture. This unique analysis assesses the intersection of the Civil War and popular culture by recognizing how memories and commemorations of the war have changed since it ended in 1865.

• The Public Art of Civil War Commemoration: A Brief History with Documents (Bedford Series in History & Culture)
• The Memory of the Civil War in American Culture (Civil War America)
• The Civil War: A Concise History
• Civil War Memories: Contesting the Past in the United States since 1865
• The Myth of the Lost Cause and Civil War History
• Civil War Stories (Dover Thrift Editions)
• The Reel Civil War: Mythmaking in American Film
• On to Petersburg: Grant and Lee, June 4-15, 1864
• A Nation Without Borders: The United States and Its World in an Age of Civil Wars, 1830-1910 (The Penguin History of the United States)
• Hood's Texas Brigade: The Soldiers and Families of the Confederacy's Most Celebrated Unit (Conflicting Worlds: New Dimensions of the American Civil War)