Patriotic Gore: Studies in the Literature of the American Civil War

by Edmund Wilson

Overview

Regarded by many critics as Edmund Wilson's greatest book, Patriotic Gore brilliantly portrays the vast political, spiritual, and material crisis of the Civil War as reflected in the lives and writings of some thirty representative Americans.

Critical/biographical portraits of such notable figures as Harriet Beecher Stowe, Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, Ambrose Bierce, Mary Chesnut, William Tecumseh Sherman, and Oliver Wendell Holmes prove Wilson to be the consummate witness to the most eloquently recorded era in American history.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393312560
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	08/19/2010
Edition description:	Reissue
Pages:	850
Sales rank:	646,880
Product dimensions:	4.40(w) x 7.20(h) x 1.60(d)

What People are Saying About This

Isaiah Berlin

I think Edmund had an insight into books, into writers, and into social circumstances, the effect of both education and environment, and had ethical, critical views on writers deeper than those of any other contemporary critic....Wilson was a very good writer. And he was serious. It's difficult to convey what the word serious means, but he was serious. He was the opposite of smart, the opposite of frivolous, the opposite of amusing, the opposite of brilliant. He was none of those things, simply a serious critic, of the first order. And of them, there are not many in the history of literature.

Editorial Reviews

"[Patriotic Gore] has long enjoyed a special and respected place as one of the most remarkable and readable books about the greatest tragedy in American history."

C. Vann Woodward

[Patriotic Gore] has long enjoyed a special and respected place as one of the most remarkable and readable books about the greatest tragedy in American history.--C. Vann Woodward

From the Publisher