Whether it’s via their tone, topic, or tenor, certain works just say “America.” Here is one such title, suggested by Grateful American Book Prize judge Dr. Peter S. Carmichael, the Robert C. Fluhrer Professor of Civil War Studies and director of the Civil War Institute at Gettysburg College:

“This Infernal War” The Civil War Letters of William and Jane Standard – Edited by Timothy Mason Roberts: This eye-opening collection of correspondence between a Union soldier and his wife offers a glimpse of how one Illinois family weathered the bloody conflict — and of how Northerners’ views on the fighting didn’t always fit into a neat (or terribly virtuous) box.

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A Patriotic Pick is a monthly feature in partnership with the Washington Independent Review of Books.