Challenges prevailing ways of thinking about the impact of the Civil War on the American South. Above all, Gaines Foster's work encourages Americans to confront the new divisions within their society even as they wrestle with old national - not just southern - failings.

" 'The Limits of the Lost Cause' is a collection of essays that challenge the prevailing ways of thinking about the impact of the Civil War on the American South. Foster's introduction provides a comprehensive overview of scholarship on the Lost Cause and Civil War memory that highlights the emergence of two ways of thinking about these topics: an older one, pioneered by C. Vann Woodward, that made a case for a southern identity shaped by defeat and guilt; and a more recent one, prevalent not only in current scholarship but in the press and public discussion, that suggests the South is still fighting the Civil War."--