LESSON SEVEN: Shaving Face

FIGHT IT OUT: Civil War buffs have their own internal division over who wrote the greatest books on the conflict. Bruce Catton won the Pulitzer for A Stillness at Appomattox (1953), which is the completion of his Army of the Potomac trilogy and one of the first history books I ever owned. Shelby Foote’s own trilogy, The Civil War a Narrative was an extension of his fiction Shiloh: A Novel (1952) and has its own place on my bookshelf. So, who wins? I am Maryland on this, a border state trying hard to be neutral. Don’t get that joke? Then read them all. 

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Home | The Civil War | PBS

The Civil War , the award-winning film produced and directed by Ken Burns, was rebroadcast as a newly restored, high-definition version in September of 2015. The 2015 rebroadcast coincided with the 25th anniversary of the series' initial broadcast in September 1990, and presented the film for the first time in the same fidelity and framing as the negative that Ken Burns and his co-cinematographers Allen Moore and Buddy Squires shot more than 25 years ago.

​BE MORE CIVIL: Shelby Foote figures prominently in Ken Burn’s PBS documentary The Civil War (1990), now available in a restored high definition format.  At six hundred and ninety minutes, time still flies thanks to the narration of America’s greatest historian David McCullough. If he ever writes about the Civil War, I may secede from the argument above and install David as the clear winner. 

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SING ALONG WITH SIDEBURNS: From the mind of standup comedian Toby Turner comes The Sideburn Song. Turner, also known as Tobuscus, lists himself as an Internet personality, which I always thought was synonymous with unemployed. But apparently, this is a paying gig, and while this little ditty tends to wander off track, so did the man for whom sideburns are named. 

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​ROAD TRIP: Find “celebrated sites and structures” of the War Between the States by visiting the Civil War Trust and looking up local heritage spots at: . Pack up the car and, hopefully you won’t endure long periods of boredom like the combatants often did. 

Heritage Sites

The places highlighted here are not just any places. They are the celebrated sites and structures that bring the earliest chapters of the American story to life - battlefields, historic homes, stations on the Underground Railroad, cemeteries, parks.

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BE BETTER THAN BURNSIDE: Give your skills in the field a test with Ultimate General: Civil War. If you find that standing still doesn’t win you many points, remember video games are not real. Which is something movie executives should have kept in mind before making a move like Pixels (2015). 

ABOUT

A real-time strategy game for PC and tablets with unique AI and gameplay set in the American Civil War.

Pixels (2015)

Directed by Chris Columbus. With Adam Sandler, Kevin James, Michelle Monaghan, Peter Dinklage. When aliens misinterpret video feeds of classic arcade games as a declaration of war, they attack the Earth in the form of the video games.

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​HAVE ONE ON THE ROCKS: Portland Oregon’s Eastside Distill- ing makes a 92 proof Burnside Bourbon that featured the flaring whiskers of the Major General until a rebranding in 2017. Pick up one of the older bottles if you can find it and pour a little out for Old Ambrose, who still gets no respect. 

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USE YOUR ILLUSION: In previous lessons, we used the example of guns and butter to showcase the efficient frontier. Here are more guns, this time paired with roses at the unofficial Guns N’ Roses YouTube channel. There we can all try to answer the unanswerable question: what’s so civil about war anyway?