"More movies have been produced about the Civil War than about any other aspect of American history. From 1903 (Uncle Tom's Cabin) to the present, film studios have released more than eight hundred silent and sound pictures about the nation's most cataclysmic event.

In this study, Bruce Chadwick first shows us how historians, journalists, playwrights, poets and novelists of the late nineteenth century - partly as an effort to reconcile former antagonists - rewrote the war's history to create enduring legends, most of which had no basis in reality. Early silent films followed their example, presenting egregiously distorted - and anti-black - stories about the war, which viewers accepted as truth.".

"Dr. Chadwick gives us a recounting of those films' plots and themes, including D. W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation, and goes on to describe dozens of movies from the twenties and thirties, among them the classic Gone With the Wind. In the forties and fifties many westerns were partly or chiefly based on the Civil War, presenting veterans of both armies gone West to make a new life in the territories, now united in their hatred of the Indians, another minority group.".

"The Reel Civil War is a book about the power and the perils of both movies and mythmaking, but more than that, it is a book about the American people and how for a very long period their false ideas about their country's history - in this case a terrible war - were perpetuated by Hollywood."--BOOK JACKET.