Troubled Commemoration

This fascinating, new study is the first in-depth examination of the U.S. Civil War Centennial of the 1960's. Cook uses extensive research from U.S. federal, state, and university archives to recount the planning, organization, and ultimate failure of the Centennial festivities. He reveals how this broad-based public history extravaganza, conceived originally as an exercise in Cold War consensus culture, was derailed by bitter conflicts generated primarily by the civil rights movement.

Robert J. Cook is Professor of American History at the University of Sheffield in England.