Editor's Notes

Oberlin, Ohio, becomes unlikely point of convergence in this issue.

How is it that our culture has studied and written and published large libraries’ worth of new books on the Civil War, and yet reading Drew Gilpin Faust, this year’s Jefferson Lecturer, is like discov

Many of us will contemplate the Civil War during the sesquicentennial, and Randall Fuller inaugurates the proceedings with a study of how the war changed the poetry of Walt Whitman.

The great fear of those in the business of promoting the humanities is that people will realize we have nothing new to say.