Playing at War

Patrick A. Lewis is the director of collections and research at the Filson Historical Society in Louisville, Kentucky, and the author of For Slavery and Union: Benjamin Buckner and Kentucky Loyalties in the Civil War. James Hill Welborn III, associate professor of history at Georgia College and State University, is the author of Dueling Cultures, Damnable Legacies: Southern Violence and White Supremacy in the Civil War Era.

"Playing at War would be a worthy addition on the shelf of any nineteenth-century American historian, especially those with a focus on the Civil War and memory studies. With these essays' approachable writing style, the volume is also highly accessible for the general reading public, and there is substantial pedagogical utility for educators who wish to utilize Civil War video games in the classroom as primary source documents, as several of the book's essays suggest."--Journal of Southern History "Historians of the Civil War have long studied the memory of that conflict via novels, films, and television. This punchy and enlightening essay collection is a powerful argument that video games deserve a place within that pop culture pantheon. Analyzing games both popular and obscure, the essays within map out a largely uncharted terrain, and the result is both eye-opening and entertaining."--Tore C. Olsson, author of Red Dead's History: A Video Game, an Obsession, and America's Violent Past "This is the first book to examine Civil War video games. Patrick A. Lewis and James Hill Welborn III have brought together an all-star lineup of scholars. This isn't just a book for the scholars that love games (although they will love it). . . . Non-gamers will find it worthwhile as well. Playing at War is full of innovative and original scholarship on Civil War memory, popular culture, and how we learn about the past through sources other than books. Providing a multitude of methodologies for how to approach video games, this volume isn't playing around."--Adam H. Domby, author of The False Cause: Fraud, Fabrication, and White Supremacy in Confederate Memory