10 Best Novels About the Civil War

[LincolnToddFan]

I read Gore Vidal's Lincoln when it first came out 30 years ago. I enjoyed it and didn't understand why it was so controversial. I did not enjoy a lot of GV's later material and his politics toward the end made me wonder about his mental health...but I thought Lincoln was first-rate.

I read The Oldest Living Confederate War Widow. I was extremely troubled by the description of the wedding night between the bride and the much older(TOO old, imo) groom. It was nothing short of rape, and I admit it affected my ability to truly enjoy the rest of the novel.

I read Louisa May Alcott's classic Little Women when I was about 12...adored it, even though I was crying my eyes out when Beth died. I didn't really like the film. I thought Liz Taylor as a blond Amy was silly and miscast, same as Peter Lawford's Laurie. But it was a good Civil War fiction novel. A kind of Northern counterpart to GWTW.

Many years ago I watched a movie called "Raintree County"(1959) with Liz Taylor and Montgomery Clift on Turner Classic Movies. Clift played an idealistic Union soldier who is seduced by and falls in love with a mentally unbalanced Southern belle (Taylor) at the outbreak of the war. It dragged in parts, but I thought it was a wonderful, haunting movie.

Then there's Gone With The Wind. I read it when I was 13, and saw the film when I was 16. I enjoyed both. As history, I felt then and still do that it was mostly fantasy. But for entertainment, it can't be beat.