Introduction: "The vibration ripples to the remotest perimeter"
Part I. Essays
For the new millennium, new perspectives on the Civil War and Reconstruction
Fletcher Pratt's A short history of the Civil War: ordeal by fire
On James McPherson's for cause and comrades: why men fought in the Civil War
Classics of Civil War fiction
William Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom!: Quentin! Listen!
Rediscovering a major Civil War novel: Joseph Stanley Pennell's The history of Rome Hanks and Willis Kindred Matters
The innocent stare at the Civil War: Madison Jones's Nashville 1863, the dying of the light
O. Henry's Civil War surprises
The last American epic: the Civil War novels of father and son, Michael and Jeff Shaara
The simultaneous burning of nine bridges in East Tennessee
Lincoln's Second Gettysburg Address
The sinking of the Sultana: a meditation on loss and forgetfulness
Part II. Fictional meditations on the Civil War
Willis Carr, sharpshooter, at Bleak House, Knoxville
Willis Carr meditates on the act of sketching: hair trigger pencil lines
Willis Carr, sharpshooter, meditates on photographs
A fever of dying: Henrietta Ramsey Lenoir and General William Price Sanders
The incendiary at the forks of the river
Fragments found on the field: Parson Brownlow and Dr. James Gettys Ramsey.