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Article: The Civil War in Popular Culture: A Reusable Past.
(book reviews)
- Article from:
- Civil War History
- Article date:
- December 1, 1997
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1997 Kent State University Press. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Why does the Civil War loom so dominantly in the American collective consciousness? A thoughtful colleague suggests that we are unconsciously redefining what it means to be an American, replacing our Daughters of the American Revolution credentials with more recent and more commonly shared ones (i.e., the Civil War). My explanation is simpler: the war coincided with the maturation of photography in our mass culture. We can see ourselves in the eyes of those who peer out of those many black and white images, the emergence of the modern American. Ken Burns tapped a wellspring of public interest with his 1993 video Civil War saga. Burns's work attempted to use the war to ...