The era of the Civil War and Reconstruction remains the crucible of American history, the trial that decisively defined this country and its self-perceived mission. The American people seem to recognize that fact, for no era in our history...
Louis Rubin should have been with us. One year short of Street’s magic dozen, 1946—57, he abandoned journalism to earn distinction at Hollins College and then the University of North Carolina as a teacher, critic, author, publisher, and...
It frequently happens that an artist who has had enormous prestige during his lifetime suffers a temporary decline in his reputation after his death. T. S. Eliot is the perfect example.
The past quarter century has witnessed a major shift in the structures of American politics, often characterized as the passing of “the New Deal order.” G. Edward White’s superb new book The Constitution and the New Deal is a monument to...
The publication on Independence Day 1981 of the concluding volume of Dumas Malone’s great Jefferson biography has inspired almost as much celebration of the author as reflection on the post-presidential years of his great subject. That is...
The first movie I ever saw was the Walt Disney cartoon, The Three Little Pigs. My grandmother took me to it. It was back in the days when you went “downtown.” There was a second feature, with live actors, called Bring ‘Em Back Alive, a...
A few words are in order about this essay’s title. It is pilfered from that great American man of letters, Edmund Wilson, who used it for his collection of American writing, The Shock of Recognition.
In The Beauty of Inflections, Jerome J. McGann sounds a compelling call for “socio-historical” criticism of literature. His book addresses Keats, Coleridge’s “Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” Tennyson’s “Charge of the Light Brigade,” and the...
Many times each year the reviewer is called upon to answer the question “Do we really need yet another book about the Civil War?” Surprisingly often the answer is a tentative “Yes!” Considerable stores of new information are assembled into...
