Brian Matthew Jordan. Marching Home: Union Veterans and Their Unending Civil War. New York, Liveright Publishing Company (2014).

This is a very special book. The foundation is the author’s command of archival resources, giving access to rich veins of material both on veterans and their families and on the communities to which they returned. He richly documents his finding that: “Neither veterans nor civilians were equipped for the challenges of the postwar years. Either unwilling or unable to exorcise the demons of the past, they could imagine no future together.” Every chapter begins with a quotation from Homer whose poetry helps us to understand that the lessons from the post–Civil War era are universal lessons that illuminate our own time, as well.

In his Author! Author! blog series, Museum president Gary T. Johnson highlights works that draw on our collection.