TN: Civil War discussion program coming to Clarksville library

From The Leaf Chronicle:  Civil War discussion program coming to Clarksville library

CLARKSVILLE, TENN. — The Clarksville-Montgomery County Public Library will host a scholar-led reading and discussion program called “Making Sense of the American Civil War” starting in January.
The program is organized as a five-part series of conversations that aim to get below the surface of familiar stories about the Civil War battles to explore the complex challenges brought on by the war, said a news release from the library.
The selected titles for discussion are “March” by Geraldine Brooks; “Crossroads of Freedom: Antietam” by James McPherson; and “America’s War: Talking About the Civil War and Emancipation On Their 150th Anniversaries,” a new anthology edited by Edward L. Ayers and published by NEH and ALA, which will serve as the focus of three of the five discussion sessions.
Leading the discussion will be Austin Peay State University emeritus history professor Richard P. Gildrie.
“We are partnering with the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Library Association to bring another great program to Tennessee communities,” said Melissa Davis, Humanities Tennessee’s director of the Tennessee Community History Program, in the news release.
“I’m pleased that this program delves deeply into experiences from multiple perspectives, and includes a wide variety of reading selections.”
The library is also partnering with the local Civil War Sesquicentennial Steering Commission to spread the word about the series.
The reading and discussion program is a five-part series focused on truly making sense of the breadth and depth of the American Civil War. The five conversations that make up the program are as follows:
Imagining War: This first part of the series compares fiction and firsthand testimony with the novel March by Geraldine Brooks that tells its story through the character of Reverend March from Louisa May Alcott’s beloved Little Women, and an excerpt from Alcott’s journal. The readings illuminate how the war challenges individuals’ beliefs and reveals personal experiences amongst the nation’s chaos.