"What makes people remember a particular battle? Why do we commemorate and mythologize some events while leaving other significant encounters in the dustbin of history?" "Reminders and depictions of our military past are everywhere: Civil War reenactments draw thousands of spectators; popular histories fill the bestseller lists; cable channels air a dizzying array of documentaries and historical dramas; and Hollywood war movies become blockbusters....

Many Americans, argues Michael C.C. Adams, think of the Civil War as more glorious, less awful, than the reality. Tourists flock to battlefields, their perceptions of the war often shaped by reenactors who work hard for verisimilitude but who cannot ultimately simulate the horrors of war. In Living Hell, Adams uses the voices of actual participants on the firing line or in the hospital ward to create a virtual historical reenactment. Perhaps because...