firsthand experience, but could see things only through their own eyes. The passage of time offers perspective, but intervening events introduce their own distortions. Fiction allows us to engage M a k i n g S ense of t h e A me r i can C i v i l Wa r with the interior lives of characters, but those characters did not actually walk and breathe; they are, unavoidably, projections of ourselves. History, despite its dedication to evidence, has roots in its own time as well as in the…
Words 4865 - Pages 20