Volume 27, Number 18 · November 20, 1980
Birth of a Nation
By C. Vann Woodward
Retreat From Reconstruction, 1869-1879
by William Gillette
Louisiana State University Press, 436 pp., $29.50
Reconstruction and Redemption in the South
edited by Otto H. Olsen
Louisiana State University Press, 250 pp., $17.50
Consider, for example, the number and variety of theories that the friends and acquaintances of one alienated couple can generate to explain why two people failed to patch up their quarrels and reunite in peace. To multiply that by the numbers involved in the failure of reconciliation between North and South is to suggest some idea of the multiplicity and complexity of theories explaining what happened to reconstruction. Except that in the latter instance the explainers are professionals who call themselves historians, and some of them have devoted whole careers and no end of ingenuity to their theories of explanation.
Review, 2979 words
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