Midnight in America

Jonathan W. White is associate professor of American Studies at Christopher Newport University.

Midnight in America is a clear-sighted testament to the ways in which soldiers and loved ones at home alike willed themselves to ""visit"" in dreams, saw prophetic possibilities, and generally coped with psychological trauma."" - The Register of the Kentucky Historical Society""White's prodigious research, conveyed in clear, coherent prose, spotlights an underutilized resource for historians and enthusiasts to use in understanding the personal impact of the war and its effect on postwar lives."" - America's Civil War""A testament to the continuing value of American studies."" - The Journal of American History""The quoted letters create a sense of intimacy with wartime lives that is eerie and intense, at times rivaling the highest achievements of art."" - Pacific Standard""White is in the vanguard of young historians whose work brings a different, but vitally significant view of activities and events surrounding the Civil War."" - Daily Press""A vital addition to Civil War collections."" - Library Journal""White offers a detailed tapestry in seven chapters that emphasize soldiers' sleep deprivation, dream lives that tapped the rank and file's sexual anxieties and fear of battle, the dreams of home folk and of slaves and former slaves, the abundance of dreams prophesying death, dream images and illustrations in the print world, and the cultural hypertext that arose in the wake of Abraham Lincoln's presentiments about his own mortality."" - American Historical Review""Well illustrated throughout and deeply researched, Midnight in America brings that world much closer to our own."" - North Carolina Historical Review""A wide-ranging and fascinating study. . . . Reminds us of the haunting effects war can (and does) have on its participants long after the fighting ends."" - Lesley J. Gordon, Civil War Monitor