AltWeeklies Wire
Madison Smartt Bell Brings the Civil War to Your Doorstepnew

Devil's Dream's frontispiece includes a photograph of the small-eyed, dark-bearded Civil War general Nathan Forrest. Prepare to flip back to that single photograph over and over again as you read.
Baltimore City Paper |
John Barry |
12-08-2009 |
Fiction
'Drum of War' Looks at Walt Whitman's Nonreligious Ministry During the Civil Warnew
Whitman recognized something that few writers of that era or after did: the Civil War's true meaning lay in the "valor of suffering -- not of men firing rifles," and certainly not in the fascination with battles and troop movements that has dominated Civil War studies.
Metro Silicon Valley |
Michael S. Gant |
01-09-2009 |
Nonfiction
'Slavery by Another Name' Examines Post-Civil War Convict Labornew
Douglas Blackmon argues -- passionately, forcefully and convincingly -- that by any measure, blacks in the states of the former Confederacy saw their freedom so warped and constrained in the decades after the Civil War that the overwhelming majority were not in any meaningful way free.
The Texas Observer |
Todd Moye |
12-17-2008 |
Nonfiction
'Awaiting the Heavenly Country' Examines the American Death Cultnew
With generous illustrated examples, Professor Mark S. Schantz depicts an America preoccupied with death. In this America, Shakespeare and militaristic Greek classicists like Herodotus were popular reading, and families of the 1830s and 1840s treasured photographic portraits of the freshly dead, including infants and children.
Shepherd Express |
Eric Beaumont |
11-10-2008 |
Nonfiction
'Bedlam South' is an Old War from a New Grishamnew
Mark Grisham (brother of John) and David Donaldson have a story they want to tell about the American Civil War, the birth of the practice of psychology in the United States and the hand of God in human affairs. That's a tall order for a debut set in a landscape already so thoroughly tunneled and trenched.
C-Ville Weekly |
Elizabeth McCullough |
09-17-2008 |
Fiction
Gene Hackman and Daniel Lenihan on 'Escape from Andersonville'new
Hackman and his friend, underwater archaeologist Lenihan, have recently completed their third historical novel. The book centers around Nathan Parker, a captain in the Union army who escapes the hellish Civil War prison.
INDY Week |
Bronwen Dickey |
06-26-2008 |
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