Ken Burn's Civil War: Historians Respond - Hardcover

About the Editor:
Robert Brent Toplin is Professor of History at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington, and the Film Review editor of The Journal of American History. He is also the principal developer of four historical dramas that have appeared nationally on PBS Television.

When The Civil War enthralled the multitude, many academics were irritated: too much about battles, not enough about slavery; too many men, not enough women. In the nonacademic press, copyediting carping was the order of the day: the documentary muffed Lincoln's age and the date of his murder, for instance. So to ventilate the criticisms before a wider public, editor Toplin enlisted several well-known historians of the war and got ripostes from the film's scriptwriter, Geoffrey Ward, and the producer himself, Ken Burns. The engaging result is a lively debate with as much to say about the series specifically as about putting history on film generally. It comes down to selection and arrangement of facts, and historians Eric Foner and Leon Litwack pound Burns, declaring his masterpiece perpetuates egregious myths, such as that the war was avoidable or that Reconstruction restored sectional amity. Burns gives not an inch, indicting the academics' "spitefully and belligerently" argued positions. Battle lines drawn, this contest will surely interest many moved by the phenomenal TV series and curious about the historiographical disturbances it made. Gilbert Taylor