The Children's Civil War is an exploration of childhood during our nation's greatest crisis. James Marten describes how the war changed the literature and schoolbooks published for children, how it affected children's relationships with absent fathers and brothers, how the responsibilities forced on northern and especially southern youngsters shortened their childhoods, and how the death and destruction that tore the country apart often cut down children as well as adults.

The Civil War tore America apart. The ensuing era of Reconstruction sewed it back together. In this vivid look at the popular culture of the era, Browne and Kreiser examine how Americans coped with the trials and tribulations of this cataclysmic period. Narrative essays examine the lives of everyday Americans—young and old, Northern and Southern, soldier and civilian—along with the major traditions and trends in every facet of the time's popular culture. Dime novels, illustrated newspapers, iceboxes, patriotic hymns and rebel rhythms, minstrel shows, and professional baseball teams were just some of the cultural phenomena that thrived during this period. Readers will benefit from the chapter bibliographies, a timeline, a cost comparison, and suggestions for further reading. This latest addition to Greenwood's ^IAmerican Popular Culture Through History^R series is an invaluable contribution to the study of American popular culture.

The Civil War is a much plumbed area of scholarship, so much so that at times it seems there is no further work to be done in the field. However, the experience of children and youth during that tumultuous time remains a relatively unexplored facet of the conflict. Children and Youth during the Civil War Era seeks a deeper investigation into the historical record by and giving voice and context to their struggles and victories during this critical period in American history. Prominent historians and rising scholars explore issues important to both the Civil War era and to the history of children and youth, including the experience of orphans, drummer boys, and young soldiers on the front lines, and even the impact of the war on the games children played in this collection. Each essay places the history of children and youth in the context of the sectional conflict, while in turn shedding new light on the sectional conflict by viewing it through the lens of children and youth. A much needed, multi-faceted historical account, Children and Youth during the Civil War Era touches on some of the most important historiographical issues with which historians of children and youth and of the Civil War home front have grappled over the last few years.

Those personal accounts resurrect the essential experience of children's work, play, education, family relations, and coming of age from their own perspectives. Steering a middle path between the myth of wholesome farm life and the reality of work that was often extremely dangerous, Riney-Kehrberg shows both the best and the worst that a rural upbringing had to offer midwestern youth a time before mechanization forever changed the rural scene and radio broke the spell of isolation. Down on the farm, truancy was not uncommon and chores were shared across genders. Yet farm children managed to indulge in inventive play---much of it homemade---to supplement store-bought toys and to get through the long spells between circuses.

Quakers in the 20th century redefined their pacifist witness to include relief for the victims of war. Drawing upon research in archives plus interviews with surviving participants, Farah Mendlesohn provides an account of British and American friends' relief to both sides in the Spanish Civil war.