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American Oracle: The Civil War in the Civil Rights Era (review)

American Oracle: The Civil War in the Civil Rights Era (review) American Oracle: The Civil War in the Civil Rights Era. By David W. Blight. (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2011. Pp. 314. Cloth, $27.95.) If you are looking for a sequel to David Blight’s masterful synthesis Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory (2002), you will not fi nd it in American Oracle. Blight’s contribution to the memory question in the Civil Rights era is at once more limited in its source material but more expansive in its refl ections on the philosophy and character of American history. American Oracle is an intellectual history of four major authors: Robert Penn Warren, Bruce Catton, Edmund Wilson, and James Baldwin. None was an academic historian, though Warren held an appointment at Yale and published The Legacy of the Civil War (1961) with a university press. What ties the four authors together is not only their brilliance as writers, but also their abiding interest in the “forces of tragedy” that drive American history. Each writer disrupts the familiar story of the Civil War and, by doing so, enables us to understand better “the weight of the past in any given present” (25). Blight’s great gift on display http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png The Journal of the Civil War Era University of North Carolina Press

American Oracle: The Civil War in the Civil Rights Era (review)

Savage, Kirk,
The Journal of the Civil War Era , Volume 2 (3) – Aug 29, 2012
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Publisher
University of North Carolina Press
Copyright
Copyright @ The University of North Carolina Press
ISSN
2159-9807

Abstract

American Oracle: The Civil War in the Civil Rights Era. By David W. Blight. (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2011. Pp. 314. Cloth, $27.95.) If you are looking for a sequel to David Blight’s masterful synthesis Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory (2002), you will not fi nd it in American Oracle. Blight’s contribution to the memory question in the Civil Rights era is at once more limited in its source material but more expansive in its refl ections on the philosophy and character of American history. American Oracle is an intellectual history of four major authors: Robert Penn Warren, Bruce Catton, Edmund Wilson, and James Baldwin. None was an academic historian, though Warren held an appointment at Yale and published The Legacy of the Civil War (1961) with a university press. What ties the four authors together is not only their brilliance as writers, but also their abiding interest in the “forces of tragedy” that drive American history. Each writer disrupts the familiar story of the Civil War and, by doing so, enables us to understand better “the weight of the past in any given present” (25). Blight’s great gift on display

Journal

The Journal of the Civil War Era – University of North Carolina Press

Published: Aug 29, 2012

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