‘The Fall of the House of Dixie’ By Bruce Levine This story is
from BostonGlobe.com, the only place for complete digital access
to the Globe. A bravura cinema portrayal of Abraham Lincoln by
Daniel Day Lewis. Museum exhibits in Washington and around the
country. Scores of commemorative books on dozens of aspects of
the conflict. With all of that surrounding the 150th anniversary
of the Civil War, should we pay any mind to a scholarly book
with 70 pages of footnotes and a bibliography that runs another
38 pages written by a professor with an endowed chair at the
University of Illinois? The question is prompted by the
appearance this month of “The Fall of the House of Dixie’’ by
Bruce Levine, and the answer is an emphatic yes. In these pages
are few of the signature Lincoln quotes, none of the popular
vignettes, and very little of the cloying key-of-D “Ashokan
Farewell’’ melodrama that we have come to associate with a war
that, along with the American Revolution, defined the nation.
But in these pages there is