Product Description Reconstructs the era of the American Civil War by drawing from the writings of those who lived through it Review Collection of essays by Edmund Wilson, published in 1962. Subtitled Studies in the Literature of the American Civil War, the book contains 16 essays on contemporaries' attitudes toward the Civil War, the effect it had on their lives, and the effects of the postwar Reconstruction period. Among the subjects of the essays are Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.; diaries of Southern women; fiction such as Poganuc People by Harriet Beecher Stowe and Old Creole Days by George Washington Cable; and memoirs by Union commanders Ulysses S. Grant and William T. Sherman and their Confederate counterparts, Robert E. Lee and John S. Mosby. --