Citing baby-boomer favorites including Bob Dylan, Bob Marley, the Beatles and other rock greats, the author shows that they have drawn on the same primal source from which mythology, dreams, and poetic insight arise. (Music)

Mystic Chords of Memory "Illustrated with hundreds of well-chosen anecdotes and minute observations . . . Kammen is a demon researcher who seems to have mined his nuggets from the entire corpus of American cultural history . . . insightful and sardonic." —Washington Post Book World In this ground-breaking, panoramic work of American cultural history, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Machine That Would Go of Itself examines a central paradox of our national identity How did "the land of the future" acquire a past? And to what extent has our collective memory of that past—as embodied in our traditions—have been distorted, or even manufactured? Ranging from John Adams to Ronald Reagan, from the origins of Independence Day celebrations to the controversies surrounding the Vietnam War Memorial, from the Daughters of the American Revolution to immigrant associations, and filled with incisive analyses of such phenonema as Americana and its collectors, "historic" villages and Disneyland, Mystic Chords of Memory is a brilliant, immensely readable, and enormously important book. "Fascinating . . . a subtle and teeming narrative . . . masterly." —Time "This is a big, ambitious book, and Kammen pulls it off admirably. . . . [He] brings a prodigious mind and much scholarly rigor to his task . . . an importnat book—and a revealing look at how Americans look at themselves." —Milwaukee Journal

“When I set foot on ground where Lincoln, Lee, Grant, or others walked, where the great battles raged, an almost magical feeling infuses me. Capturing these places on film, hopefully, in some small way, allows us to preserve that magical feeling of the special places and people of the war in our everyday lives.” These are the impassioned words of longtime Civil War aficionado David J. Eicher. Through his stunning photographs in Mystic Chords of Memory, Eicher presents many of the historical sites that evoke that “magical feeling” for him and thousands of other Civil War scholars and buffs. In this captivating -pictorial work, Eicher not only visits the most famous Civil War battlefields—Gettysburg, Vicksburg, Chickamauga, and Antietam among them—but also introduces readers to an array of lesser-known battle sites as well as monuments, forts, houses and farms, cemeteries, and museums. The breathtaking color photographs, chosen from Eicher’s vast personal collection, are supplemented by powerful, historical black-and-white photographs that propel readers back to the Civil War era. The resulting richly illustrated work captures the most important, unusual, and interesting places associated with the war as they stand today. Eicher’s probing analysis of the arduous four-year struggle provides background on its origins, interpretations of its major battles, and a summary of the war’s aftermath. Peppered with more than 150 quotations from the journals, letters, and diaries of Civil War participants, the narrative allows readers to absorb the human aspects of the greatest of America’s national tragedies. Eicher details the firing on Fort Sumter, the shock of First Bull Run, the carnage of Shiloh, the transformation of the war at Antietam, the turning points at Gettysburg and Vicksburg, the decisive, grueling campaigns of 1864, and the surrender at Appomattox. Contributing to the book’s charm are dozens of images of forgotten places touched by the war, such as an abandoned graveyard in a Mississippi wood, the sandy strip of beach where some of the war’s first black soldiers won fame, trenches along a Virginia county highway, and a brick church in Virginia pocked by artillery fire. Whether viewed as fields of death or fields of glory—and they were both—Civil War sites retain a commanding hold on the American imagination. In words as well as photographs, Eicher captures the poignant memory of our nation in conflict.

My father died in 1990 and in the process of going through his belongings I discovered an old wooden weather-beaten trunk in the attic that aroused my curiosity. Considering the layers of dust covering the lid, it appeared that it had not been opened in many years. The lid seemed to creak and strain with the weight of the ages as I lifted the heavy oak. A neatly-folded Union Civil War uniform, complete with cap, stared up at me from the lost past. Although obviously worn, great care had been taken in its preservation. I gingerly lifted up the jacket and immediately noticed the three sergeant stripes on the upper arm. I knew then who had worn it. My great-grandfather, Sergeant Charles Powers, had served two tours of duty during the Civil War and in 1861-62 had been stationed in Washington with the thousands of other troops guarding the city from what many thought was an imminent invasion from the South. During that period of 1861-62 he was at various times assigned to guarding the White House, Capitol and Arsenal. Sgt. Powers lived till 1918 and my father, born in 1908, used to travel with his parents from Harrisburg to Lancaster to visit his grandfather where he would sit on the old gentlemans knee and be regaled with stories of Civil War Washington and the Lincolns. My father than passed these stories down to me.

Citing baby-boomer favorites including Bob Dylan, Bob Marley, the Beatles and other rock greats, the author shows that they have drawn on the same primal source from which mythology, dreams, and poetic insight arise. (Music)

This book is divided into three sections. The first section is dedicated to antebellum America. Often, the antecedent causes of the Civil War, including the emergence of technology and the acquisition of land, are overshadowed by the vicissitudes of the war and the emancipation of slaves. The second section of this book is devoted to the war and the surrounding personal events that are so often hidden in the fog of war. The third part of the book is devoted to the aftermath of this bloody fratricidal conflict; and the subsequent effects on America, in general, and African Americans in particular.

Echoes of the Mystic Chords is a spellbinding high-concept genre-crosser, fusing a metaphysical thriller with a cosmic dark mystery. It was a decade in the making with 12 thought-provoking interior illustrations, detailed cover and title page art, riddle-poems starting each chapter, and top-quality fonts and design work. More at www.echomystic.com