Civil War Memory Reading List

[updated last on July 5, 2007]

Blair, William. Cities of the Dead: Contesting the Memory of the Civil War in the South, 1865-1914.     Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004

Blight, David W. Beyond the Battlefield: Race, Memory, and the American Civil War. Springfield: University of Massachusetts Press, 2002.

_____ Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001.

Blum, Edward J. Reforging the White Republic: Race, Religion, and American Nationalism, 1865-1898. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2005.

Bodnar, John. Remaking America: Public Memory, Commemoration, and Patriotism in the Twentieth Century. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993.

Brown, Thomas J. The Public Art of Civil War Commemoration: A Brief History with Documents. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2004.

Brundage, W. Fitzhugh. The Southern Past: A Clash of Race and Memory. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005.

_____ ed. Where These Memories Grow: History, Memory, and Southern Identity. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000.

Cimprich, John. Fort Pillow, a Civil War Massacre, and Public Memory. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2005.

Clark, Kathleen. Defining Moments: African American Commemoration & Popular Culture in the South, 1863-1913. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005.

Connelly, Thomas L. The Marble Man: Robert E. Lee and His Image in American Society. New York: Knopf, 1977.

Cook, Robert J. Troubled Commemoration: The American Civil War Centennial, 1961-1965. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2007.

Coski, John M. The Confederate Battle Flag: America's Most Embattled Emblem. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005.

Cullen, Jim. The Civil War in Popular Culture: A Reusable Past. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian University Press, 1995.

Desjardin, Thomas A. These Honored Dead: How the Story of Gettysburg Shaped American Memory. Cambridge: DaCapo Press, 2003.

Fahs, Alice and Joan Waugh, editors. The Memory of the Civil War in American Culture. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004.

Ferguson, Andrew. Land of Lincoln: Adventures in Abe's America. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2007.

Foster, Gaines. Ghosts of the Confederacy: Defeat, The Lost Cause, and the Emergence of the New South. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987.

Gallagher, Gary W. and Alan T. Nolan, editors. The Myth of the Lost Cause and Civil War History. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000.

Goldfield, David. Southern Histories: Public, Personal, and Sacred. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2003.

_____. Still Fighting the Civil War: The American South and Southern History. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2002.

Grant, Susan M. and Peter J. Parish, editors. Legacy of Disunion: The Enduring Significance of the American Civil War. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2003.

Horton, James Oliver and Lois E., editors. Slavery and Public History: The Tough Stuff of American Memory. New York: New Press, 2006.

Horwitz, Tony. Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War. New York: Random House/Pantheon, 1998.

Kammen, Michael, Mystic Chords of Memory: The Transformation of Tradition in American Culture. New York: Random House/Vintage, 1993.

Lindgren, James M. Preserving the Old Dominion: Historic Preservation and Virginia Traditionalism. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1993.

Linenthal, Edward T. Sacred Ground: Americans and Their Battlefields. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993 (paperback reprint).

_____. Preserving Memory: The Struggle to Create America's Holocaust Museum. New York: Columbia University Press, 1991.

Loewen, James. Lies Across America: What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong. New York: New Press, 1999.

Lowenthal, David. Possessed by the Past: The Heritage Crusade and the Spoils of History. New York: Free Press, 1996.

Mills, Cynthia and Pamela H. Simpson, editors. Monuments to the Lost Cause: Women, Art, and the Landscapes of Southern Memory. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2003.

Neff, John. Honoring the Civil War Dead: Commemoration and the Problem of Reconciliation. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2005.

Piehler, G. Kurt. Remembering War the American Way. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2004.

Poole, W. Scott. Never Surrender: Confederate Memory and Conservatism in the South Carolina Upcountry. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2004.

Reardon, Carol. Pickett's Charge in History and Memory. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998.

Savage, Kirk. Standing Soldiers, Kneeling Slaves: Race, War and Monuments in Nineteenth-Century America. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997.

Shackel, Paul A. Memory in Black and White: Race, Commemoration, and the Post-Bellum Landscape. New York: Rowan and Littlefield, 2003.

Silber, Nina. The Romance of Reunion: Northerners and the South, 1865-1900. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993.

Smith, Timothy B. This Great Battlefield of Shiloh: History, Memory, and the Establishment of a Civil War National Military Park. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2004.

Sutton, Robert K. ed. Rally on the High Ground: The National Park Service Symposium on the Civil War. Eastern National, 2001.

Warren, Robert P. The Legacy of the Civil War. New York: Random House, 1961.

Weeks, Jim. Gettysburg: Memory, Market, and an American Shrine. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003.

Wilson, Charles R. Baptized in Blood: The Religion of the Lost Cause. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1980.

Zenzen, Joan M. Battling for Manassas: The Fifty-Year Preservation Struggle at Manassas National Battlefield. University Park: Penn State Press, 1998.

Comments

[Mark A. Graves]

I'm currently taking a senior history seminar at University of North Florida, "Civil War and Memory". This reading list will be a great help. Thanks for sharing it.
Regards,
Mark A. Graves
Callahan Florida

[Kevin Levin]

Mark, -- I assume you are taking the class with Professor Aaron Sheehan-Dean. If so you are lucky to working under a first-rate scholar. Enjoy the class and please feel free to share your ideas here.