Suggested Print Resources

The following resources offer a variety of starting points for papers on the Civil War in literature, film, and popular culture. Let me know if you have difficulty locating any book that interests you.

Aaron, Daniel. The Unwritten War: American Writers and the Civil War. New York: Oxford University Press, 1975.

Deals primarily with the reactions of canonical writers to the war.

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

Includes lengthy discussions of Gone with the Wind (book and film), rock music, and Glory.

Kinnard, Roy. The Blue & the Gray on the Silver Screen: More Than 80 Years of Civil War Movies. Secaucus, NJ: Birch Lane Press, 1996.

Brief overviews of dozens of Civil War films.

Lively, Robert A. Fiction Fights the Civil War: An Unfinished Chapter in the Literary History of the American People. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1957.

This landmark study offers an overview of hundreds of novels.

Madden, David, and Peggy Bach, eds. Classics of Civil War Fiction. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1991.

This collection of essays attacks the notion that few great novels have been written about the war.

Marius, Richard. The Columbia Book of Civil War Poetry. New York: Columbia University Press, 1994.

A wide-ranging anthology.

Menendez, Albert J. Civil War Novels: An Annotated Bibliography. New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1986.

Catalogs 1,028 books. Includes a useful subject index.

Toplin, Robert Brent. Ken Burns's The Civil War. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.

Essays in response to the PBS mini-series.

Wilson, Edmund. Patriotic Gore: Studies in the Literature of the American Civil War. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1962.

Includes essays on Harriet Beecher Stowe and Ambrose Bierce.