The Known World, by Edward P. Jones, tells a story so rich and intricate, so visionary, it’s impossible to describe except in the flattest terms. The…
I’m honored that my article on Fredericksburg National Cemetery is the Memorial Day feature for The New York Times Disunion column. The source of the Walt Whitman quotes…
Fields of gold and brown, No berries blood red–tarnished lace of grass and weed.
If the roots of Whitman’s witness tree were bathed in the anguish the poet beheld, no wonder its form holds such tortured beauty. Walt Whitman…
Denomination didn’t matter. If a church had a steeple, gunners wanted to hit it. Federal gunners at Fredericksburg and elsewhere simply couldn’t seem to resist…
In Oakwood Cemetery, Richmond, Virginia, most of the Confederate dead, known and unknown, moulder in graves marked only by numbered blocks of granite. That doesn’t…