My Favorite Civil War Novels

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"THE REAL WAR WILL NEVER GET INTO THE books." So wrote Walt Whitman, who witnessed the Civil War close up as a volunteer nurse in war hospitals in Washington, D.C. As effective as his war writings are, one can read them and yet acknowledge the truth of his point about the war never being fully represented in words. Tens of thousands of Civil War books later, his declaration still holds true. But fiction gives us a visceral understanding of what Whitman called "the seething hell and black infernal background" of the war. Well-crafted novels bring alive the richly textured atmosphere and varied personalities of the war in a way that even the best journalism and history books can't. A number of masterly fiction writers have used the bleak context of the Civil War to offer profound insights into the human condition. Here are my favorite Civil War novels.

The Red Badge of Courage (1895)

Stephen Crane (1871-1900), a minister's son born several years after Appomattox, wrote one of the great war novels of all time when he was scarcely more than a boy. In The Red Badge of Courage, he produced powerful war scenes by imaginatively …