"One hardcore took this method acting to a bizarre extreme. His name was Robert Lee Hodge and the soldiers pointed him out as he ambled toward us. Hodge looked as though he'd stepped from a Civil War tintype: tall, rail thin, with a long pointed beard and a butternut uniform so frayed and filthy that it clung to his lank frame like rages to a scarecrow."
Chap. 1, p. 7

"Historians are fond of saying that the Civil War occurred in 10,00 places. Poke a pin in a map of the South and you're likely to prod loose some battle or skirmish or other tuft of Civil War history."
Chap. 2, p. 18

"As a Civil War bore, I'd arrived in Charleston naively expecting to confront the 1860s at every turn. But climbing off the Beauregard, I quickly saw that the Confederacy represented only a four-year blip in Charleston's long history."
Chap. 3, p...