Faculty Bibliography

Visitors flock to its battlefields, where re-enactments are the rage. Truckers and accountants boldly storm Gettysburg's Little Round Top or Chickamauga's Horseshoe Ridge in the tailored uniforms of "Billy Yank" and "Johnny Reb." More than 40 million people watched Ken Burns's 1990 documentary, The Civil War. Even the chapters on Web sites concerned with military matters go beyond battles and armaments to the experiences of common soldiers. Want to learn about the treatment of wounded troops? The University of Toledo has a good site (http://www.cl.utoledo.edu/ canaday/quackery/quack8.html). Need some material about Jews in the Civil War? Click on (http://www.jewishhistory.com/civilwar.htm). Curious about the layout of the Civil War prison at Andersonville, Ga.? A National Park Service Web site, (http://www.nps.gov/ande), provides the details, including evidence of an uncompleted escape tunnel. Or the searcher can explore the mixed emotions of Franklin County's whites concerning the evils of slavery and its further expansion. Some viewed slavery as the proper station for those with dark skin, while others accepted its presence in the South but opposed its spread into new territory. A few demanded its abolition on moral grounds.

For the immigrants who came through New York harbor in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the Statue of Liberty no doubt dazzled their senses, but Ellis Island determined their fate. A new CD-ROM gives you a feeling for what they saw and felt as they arrived. The key sections of this CD-ROM - The Journey and The Golden Door - are well done. Combining videos, photographs, primary documents and crisp commentary, they follow the immigrant path from the tiny villages of Europe to the controlled chaos of Ellis Island. Viewers should have no trouble navigating along. There is an adequate search function, a zoom lens to enlarge images and simple commands to store and print documents. One disappointment is the failure of "The Ellis Island Experience" to emphasize the changing dynamic of immigration. In the 1890s, some Americans grew uneasy about the enormous flow of immigrants from places such as Greece, Italy, Russia, Poland and Hungary. Without new safeguards, some believed, these immigrants would pollute the nation with a stream of alien blood. Ellis Island was a logical response.

MOST Americans view the immigrant experience through the bold strokes of struggle and assimilation. They barely notice the underside of immigration--the rules for inspecting, admitting and excluding newcomers to American shores.

For those seeking to understand this conflict's remarkable grip on our collective imagination, The Civil War Experience is a good place to start. Bulging with information, beautifully put together and simple to navigate, it combines serious history with mindless (though mildly addictive) razzle-dazzle. Made in conjunction with the History Channel, the disc includes 150 top-flight biographies of leading Civil War figures and dozens of topical essays supplemented by video clips and eyewitness accounts. There are video games that allow you to blast the enemy with cannon fire and run a naval blockade. There is also a trivia game that I strongly urge overconfident historians to avoid. The opening section of this CD-ROM, The Road to War, is disappointing. Essays on topics like the Missouri Compromise (1820-1821), the Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854) and the Dred Scott decision (1857) provide some historical background, a sound idea, except that the essays, alas, are flat, poorly connected and confuse the slavery issue. In the Dred Scott essay, for example, we are told that ''Southerners saw the decision as a guarantee that slavery would be protected within Southern borders.'' In fact, that point had long been conceded by most Northerners, Lincoln among them. What Southerners really saw in the Dred Scott decision was a guarantee that slavery would be protected into the vast federal territory acquired in the Louisiana Purchase and the Mexican War

Oshinsky reviews "Freedom From Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945" by David M. Kennedy

David Oshinsky reviews the book "A Nearly Normal Life: A Memoir" by Charles L. Mee

I am no expert on history CD-ROMs. In truth, I have consciously shied away from them, seeing digital tools as a frivolous assault on scholarly standards. After spending a week playing with The Library of Congress: Eyes of the Nation, a new CD-ROM exploring the American experience through documents selected from the world's largest archive, I've been partly converted. Used in conjunction with more traditional methods, the CD-ROM may well revolutionize the way we teach history

I AM no expert in the field of history CD-ROM's. In truth, I have consciously shied away from them, seeing digital tools as a frivolous assault on scholarly standards. After spending a week playing with The Library of Congress: Eyes of the Nation, a new CD-ROM exploring the American experience through documents selected from the world's largest archive, I've been partly converted, much like the wayward Puritan of the 1650's who made a ''halfway covenant'' with his faith. Used in conjunction with more traditional methods, the CD-ROM may well revolutionize the way we teach history. The Eyes of the Nation CD-ROM is divided into five parts. All provide a glimpse of the treasures to be found in the Library of Congress's fabulous special collections. (The DVD-ROM version has 19 additional exhibits, more than 1,000 additional images and three hours of full-screen video.) Part One introduces the viewer to the world of rare books, maps, prints and photographs, including the first known slave narrative published on American soil (1760), a detailed sketch of the Gettysburg battlefield by a Confederate topographer (1863) and a poignant photo of two black women on their knees, decorating the grave of a black soldier in the segregated Arlington National Cemetery (1943)

David M. Oshinsky reviews the book "Why the American Century?" by Olivier Zunz