| A Late Encounter with the Civil War Subjects: United States -- History -- Civil War 1861–1865 -- Centennial celebrations etc.; United States -- History -- Civil War 1861–1865 -- Historiography; Collective memory -- United States; In A Late Encounter with the Civil War , Michael Kreyling confronts the changing nature of our relationship to the anniversary of the war that nearly split the United States. When significant anniversaries arrive in the histories of groups such as families, businesses, or nations, their members set aside time to formally remember their shared past. This phenomenon--this social or collective memory--reveals as much about a group's sense of place in the present as it does about the events of the past. So it is with the Civil War. MICHAEL KREYLING is a professor of English at Vanderbilt University. He is the author of The South That Wasn't There and Inventing Southern Literature , for which he received the Eudora Welty Prize. |