Virginia's Civil War [Hardcover]

Professor Peter Wallenstein (Editor), Bertram Wyatt-Brown (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 27, 2005

The twenty essays collected here explore the Virginia story throughout the Civil War era. Some contributors examine Robert E. Lee and the issues confronting his men, such as soldier morale and religious conversion. Others emphasize the wartime home front--in some cases reexamining its connection with the battlefront--or explore questions of gender, race, or religion. Several essays extend the story into the postwar years and consider various Virginia individuals or groups in the context of the conflict’s aftermath. Building on current knowledge, but often contesting conventional thinking, the essays give the most comprehensive view yet of Civil War Virginia and suggest avenues of inquiry that remain to be explored.

Contributors:Ian Binnington * Theodore C. DeLaney * Michael Fellman * Lisa Tendrich Frank * Monte Hampton * Wayne Wei-siang Hsieh * Charles F. Irons * Caroline E. Janney * Suzanne W. Jones * Ervin L. Jordan Jr. * Charles Joyner * Daniel Kilbride * Susanna Michele Lee * Lucinda H. MacKethan * John M. McClure * Amy Feely Morsman * Jason Phillips * David G. Smith * Emory M. Thomas * Peter Wallenstein * Bertram Wyatt-Brown

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Wyatt-Brown and Wallenstein, as well as the contributors to this volume, deserve much praise, for they did their work well and have produced an impressive book that covers a wide range of topics related to the social and cultural history of the Civil War era.... [F]or those looking for a book that will help them better understand the world beyond the battlefield, this exceptional volume of essays is highly recommended."

(Civil War News )

About the Author

Peter Wallenstein teaches history at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University and is the author of Cradle of America: Four Centuries of Virginia History. Bertram Wyatt-Brown is Richard J. Milbauer Professor of History, Emeritus, at the University of Florida and is currently a visiting scholar at Johns Hopkins University. He is the author of The Shaping of Southern Culture: Honor, Grace, and War, 1760s–1880s.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: University of Virginia Press; First edition (January 27, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0813923158
• ISBN-13: 978-0813923154
• Product Dimensions: 6.1 x 1.1 x 9.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #664,358 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Wayne Hsieh immigrated to the United States as an infant from Taiwan and grew up in Alhambra--a suburb of Los Angeles with a large overseas Chinese population. He received an excellent public high school education at Alhambra High School, and went on to Yale University, where he received a B.A. in History (2000). He wrote a senior essay on Lincoln and religion under the direction of David Brion Davis. He attended the University of Virginia for his graduate work, where he received a PhD in History (2004) and worked under the direction of Gary W. Gallagher and Edward L. Ayers--the latter is now President of the University of Richmond.

Hsieh spent the 2004/5 academic year as an Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at Yale's Whitney Humanities Center, where he also taught half time in Yale's Directed Studies curriculum--a freshman Great Books program of which Hsieh is himself a proud alumnus. In August 2005 he joined the U.S. Naval Academy History Department, where he remains an assistant professor.

Between July 2008 and June 2009, Hsieh was on interagency detail with the U.S. State Department in Iraq, where he served as the Tuz Satellite Lead for the Salah ad Din Provincial Reconstruction Team. The most important of his duties centered on facilitating ethnic and political reconciliation in the Tuz district (approximately 150,000 inhabitants). He received a Commander's Award for Civilian Service from 3 BSTB (Department of the Army), and a Meritorious Honor Award from the U.S. Department of State (Embassy Baghdad).

Hsieh has a diverse number of interests in military history, although he remains a nineteenth-century Americanist by trade and training. He also, on occasion, wistfully regrets not pursuing to a greater degree his earlier interests in intellectual history, which led to such doomed pursuits as attempting to learn Ancient Greek. Speaking of doomed pursuits, he expends vast quantities of time and energy on following the Los Angeles Dodgers, despite the probable prospect of disappointment most every year. Yet he begins the grim process again every spring, in a testament to the triumph of faith over reason.