To many Civil War buffs, the name Gordon Rhea will be familiar; to many others — especially those addicted to the work of Shelby Foote — it may not be. Foote’s “The Civil War: A Narrative” has been a classic for years, and is perhaps the dominant contemporary narrative of the conflict. Foote’s three-volume, 3,000-page effort [...]

Near the end of “Ecstatic Nation: Confidence, Crisis, and Compromise, 1848-1877,” Brenda Wineapple’s fresh and riveting account of America at war with itself, she writes of a sense of fatigue that coursed through the nation in the 1870s. The North had won the war and slavery had ended, but there the gains stalled, leading Quaker [...]

Civil War photographer Mathew Brady largely taught himself the finer points of the two pursuits that have linked his name to history: taking pictures and self-promotion. The son of Irish immigrant farmers had a talent for cajoling presidents, generals and business leaders to sit before his camera. Other than his birth around 1823 in Warren [...]

War films are a tricky subject to deal with. It seems that they are either epic pieces of cinema or just complete train wrecks. Somehow most of them still manage to get some decent star power to headline no matter how bad they may or may not be. The latest War Flowers features a decent [...]

Dolly Parton and Loretta Lynn have been confirmed to contribute tracks to Divided and United: Songs of the American Civil War, a two CD set of Civil War era song covers set for release in the fall. John Cohen, the man behind the production, says that the LP has a noble aim: “This record aspires [...]

“Howeffer did zey vin!” mutters a German guest at Faulty Towers, staring down upon the hapless and prostrate Basil Faulty at the end of that British series’ classic, “The Germans.” I found myself repeating it like a mantra as I plowed through Diane Monroe Smith’s “Command Conflicts in Grant’s Overland Campaign: Ambition and Animosity in [...]

Divided & United is technically a cover album, but you aren’t likely to own any of the originals. After inspiration struck while on location in Nashville (and with some help from a Tennessean cover story) Randall Poster, a music supervisor best known for his work with Wes Anderson, Martin Scorcese and Todd Haynes, set about curating [...]