Patriotic Gore Author:Edmund Wilson Very readable because the chapters were originally published as articles in The New Yorker. This study is a brilliant survey of Civil War literature, such as memoirs by generals, diaries of society ladies, and popular and serious books by novelists. Wilson writes in a restrained style, with decided but not hectoring opinions. Wilson though does ... more »get in some telling jabs. Of Abraham Lincoln, for example, he writes, "There has undoubtedly been written about him more romantic and sentimental rubbish than about any other American figure, with the possible exception of Edgar Allan Poe; and there are moments when one is tempted to feel that the cruelest thing that has happened to Lincoln since he was shot by Booth has been to fall into the hands of Carl Sandburg."« less