“Apples & Ashes,” by Coleman Hutchison

Apples & Ashes: Literature, Nationalism, and the Confederate States of America (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2012).  277 pgs. Review by Allen Mendenhall Confederate literature and literary culture have not received the critical consideration that they warrant.  Not only that, but they have been dismissed as scant and mediocre.  Scholars of the South and […]

“Lions of the West,” by Robert Morgan

Robert Morgan.  Lions of the West: Heroes and Villains of the Westward Expansion.  Chapel Hill, North Carolina: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2011. Good histories don’t just tell stories; they make arguments.  Robert Morgan’s arguments in Lions of the West, subtle though they are, run as follows: historians and storytellers cannot help but view dramatic […]