Joan Waugh has 2 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 2 narrators. The most-rated is U.S. Grant.
Wars Within a War
Summary
The 12 essays in Wars within a War explore the internal stresses that posed serious challenges to the viability of the opposing sides in the Civil War as well as some of the ways in which wartime disputes and cultural fissures carried over into the postwar years and beyond.Comprised of contributions from leading scholars, this volume extends the discussion of controversies far past the death of the Confederacy in the spring of 1865. Contributors address, among other topics, Walt Whitman's poetry, the handling of the Union and Confederate dead, the treatment of disabled and destitute northern veterans, Ulysses S. Grant's imposing tomb, and Hollywood's long relationship with the Lost Cause narrative.Reflecting a variety of approaches and methodologies, these essays provide a starting point for anyone interested in how Americans have argued about the prosecution, meaning, and memory of the war.
©2009 Joan Waugh (P)2009 Audible, Inc.
U.S. Grant
Summary
At the time of his death, Ulysses S. Grant was the most famous person in America, considered by most citizens to be equal in stature to George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. Yet today his monuments are rarely visited, his military reputation is overshadowed by that of Robert E. Lee, and his presidency is permanently mired at the bottom of historical rankings. In an insightful blend of biography and cultural history, Joan Waugh traces Grant's shifting national and international reputation, illuminating the role of memory in our understanding of American history. She captures a sense of what led 19th-century Americans to overlook Grant's obvious faults and hold him up as a critically important symbol of national reconciliation and unity. Waugh further shows that Grant's reputation and place in public memory closely parallel the rise and fall of the Northern version of the Civil War story, in which the United States was the clear, morally superior victor and Grant was the emblem of that victory. After the failure of Reconstruction, the dominant Union myths about the war gave way to a Southern version that emphasized a more sentimental remembrance of the honor and courage of both sides and ennobled the "Lost Cause". By the 1920s, Grant's reputation had plummeted. Most Americans today are unaware of how revered Grant was in his lifetime. Joan Waugh uncovers the reasons behind the rise and fall of his renown, underscoring as well the fluctuating memory of the Civil War itself.
©2009 Joan Waugh (P)2009 Audible, Inc.