"No event has transformed the United States more fundamentally - or been studied more exhaustively - than the Civil War. In Writing the Civil War, fourteen distinguished historians present a wide-ranging discussion of the vast effort to chronicle the conflict - an undertaking that began with the remembrances of Civil War veterans and has become an increasingly prolific field of scholarship. Covering a variety of topics - from battlefield operations to the impact of race and gender - this volume is an informative guide through the labyrinth of Civil War literature. The contributors provide authoritative and interpretive evaluations of the study and explication of the struggle that has been called the American Iliad."--Jacket.