Patriotic Gore

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.
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.
Our American Plutarch . . . a great book. It was not only the greatest single performance of Wilson's unique career as a man of letters. . . it made the passion that went into the war, and into the disillusion that followed it, more affecting than any other contemporary book on this greatest of national experiences.--Alfred Kazin
[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 -- C. Vann Woodward