Not sure if P&R, but book selection at Barnes and Noble

Jan 6, 2022, 10:38 AM

So, I grew up going to Barnes and Noble nearly every weekend with my dad for a few hours and looking at the books, toys, and magazines. I have had a large fascination with the Civil War since I was a kid, so I spent most of my time in the dedicated Civil War section. Typically, the shelves were stocked with books about everything to do with the Civil War, including, but not limited to general summaries, memoirs from foot soldiers, books about and written by generals on both sides, Lincoln, the confederate government all the way to Reconstruction.

I have been getting back into reading of late, so I swung by the other day and noticed the Civil War section at B&N has been reduced to about half a column of shelves. The book I was interested in, "From Manassas to Appomattox by James Longstreet wasn't there, so I looked around the other books and it is nothing like it used to be. 90% of the books are about Lincoln, Grant, slavery, and Reconstruction.

This left me thinking about the reasoning behind it:

-Is the interest in the Civil War waning?
-Have books about the south/southern soldiers been taken off the shelves due to the recent political climate?
-Maybe this is just an overall approach by B&N to cut down on overhead and reduce the amount of books they're sitting on?

Id say its probably a combination of all three to some extent. Most of the Civil War books, including all of the ones about the south/confederacy typically have at least one confederate flag on the front cover, so I could understand B&N wouldn't want that front facing toward their average customer who is probably left leaning and could find it "offensive". I also know that publishing books is dumb expensive right now and most readers are shifting away from paper copies of books, so that could explain the reduced availability.

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Please forgive me, @IneligibleUser

Those are probably of some real value. For years, Freeman's stuff was a definitive go-to for anyone looking for more than surface treatment stuff. The bio and Lee's Lieutenants for sure.

On the topic of retelling, that wouldn't be a bad angle for a book in itself...something along the lines of "Retelling the Civil War though the Years."

I know the Lost Causers got their shot first in the late 1800's with all of the Confed General biographies and recriminations on why they lost - some pretty brutal blame was tossed on each other. I was up at Kennesaw over the summer and they had a display on the post war reunions - where clearly reconciliation and moving on was the main focus, at any cost - even above Reconstruction and the accepting of Jim Crow. And of course, Lincoln famously said union above everything else - something horribly paraphrased along the lines of "I'll take a union without slavery, or a union with it, but it must be a union."

Same thing happened after WW2. The Soviets, behind the iron curtain, couldn't get their stories out. So it was the Germans who got to tell their side first in the 50's and 60's in their biographies, and that became the broadly accepted reality of the East Front till it was balanced in the 90's after the collapse of the Soviets.

Winning the battle of telling history is not unlike Forrest's advice on winning battles - "get there the firstus with the mostus"

Not sure if P&R, but book selection at Barnes and Noble

You and one of my BILs would get along famously***

Re: Not sure if P&R, but book selection at Barnes and Noble

Side comment

Re: Side comment

I have ALWAYS seen that book, but never grabbed it

Re: I have ALWAYS seen that book, but never grabbed it

Newt Gingrich's alternate Civil War book is interesting***

Read them all

Re: Not sure if P&R, but book selection at Barnes and Noble

I appreciate your last point about the rehashing of it all

Re: Not sure if P&R, but book selection at Barnes and Noble

Bits and pieces

this may or may not interest you

Re: this may or may not interest you

Thats pretty dang cool

KA ALL NIGHT, BRUNCH ALL DAY!!!!***

Hey

It's not PC to learn real history. You know. b/c it's HIS

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