"National Humanities Medal recipient and two-time recipient of the Pulitzer Prize David Levering Lewis's own family history that shifts our understanding of the larger American story Sitting beneath a stained-glass window dedicated to his grandmother in the Atlanta church where his family had prayed for generations, it struck Lewis that he knew very little about those ancestors. And so, in his mid-80s, the esteemed historian began to excavate their...

An epic elegy in American Studies, this collective biography warmly delineates some 170 centenarian lives among the nation's last remnant of Confederate veterans of the 1940s and after. Heavily genealogical, this monumental 15-year study answers ambitious questions its author wanted to know about the last survivors of the War Between the States--who were they, how old did they live to be, where were they from, in what order did they die, how did...