Reviews for What Caused the Civil War?: Reflections on the South and Southern History

The average rating for What Caused the Civil War?: Reflections on the South and Southern History based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2015-02-23 00:00:00 Line Shink This wonderful set of nine essays is just about as complete of a discussion of the South, the Civil War, Reconstruction, family, home, historical research and some practical applications of the lessons of the Civil War for us today as I have read. It seems to me that most of these essays have been published somewhere else first. That being said, Ayers has arranged them in a rough chronological order based not on the historical topic of the essay but on Ayers's own life. He starts with his own childhood in Eastern Tennessee and Western North Carolina and his own growing understand of what it means to be a Southerner. As the essays go along, Ayers goes to college, travels the world a bit and eventually returns to the South to do research and eventually teach at the University of Virginia. As Ayers moves through his education and his career he develops a perspective on the Civil War and that perspective changes as he grows in his research. The best essay was the title essay. Ayers has a surprisingly... Read more at: Read all of my Civil War-related reviews at:

Review # 2 was written on 2011-09-16 00:00:00 Fred Hernandez Coincidently, this is the second consecutive book I have read where the subtitle is more accurate about the book's contents than the title. Despite the Confederate soldier on the cover, this book actually has very little to do with the Civil War itself. The essays are the author's thoughts and experiences with Southern history. It argues the South is much more complex than widely believed and typically portrayed, and the Civil War's causes are likewise complicated. But the book is too light to feel like it gets anywhere or strongly argues it's point. That's a problem I've noticed with short books (about 200 pages or less) - they simply aren't long enough to go into any real depth.