"Patriotic Gore" revisited at Slate.

A book about the American Civil War that has eluded my attention all these years, and a controversial one at that; any defense of the South's role in the war tends to prompt disgust in me, but just the same, at a time when Dick Cheney gets a new heart and New Albany's committee for the perpetuation of its white bread Bicentennial plows forward, re-examinations always intrigue. I'll get to it, just as soon as I'm finished reading about Caravaggio. Thanks to Prof. V for this wonderful tip.

“Patriotic Gore is Not Really Much Like Any Other Book by Anyone” ... Revisiting one of the most important and confounding books ever written about the Civil War, by David Blight (Slate)

 ... One reason so much attention was paid to Patriotic Gore, as one reviewer after another remarked, was that is was so “genuinely serious,” so startlingly unusual amid the “flapdoodle,” the “dressed up” “vulgarities and tomfooleries” of Centennial books, pamphlets, re-enactments, facile speeches, patriotic commissions, pursuits of minutia, and other Blue-Gray sentimentalism.