The library is one of 65 public libraries nationwide receiving grants to host the series which will encourage participants to consider the legacy of the Civil War and emancipation.  Local support for the series is provided by the Tennessee State Library and Archives.

“The Civil War takes us back to a time in American history when civility ruptured and the nation split in two,” said Jim Leach, chairman of NEH. “The sesquicentennial of the Civil War and emancipation is an occasion for America to reflect together about the causes and ramifications of our greatest internal conflict, and a most appropriate way for ‘us the living’ to renew the American spirit in these still-troubled times.”

In addition to program funding, the library received copies of the following works:

“March” by Geraldine Brooks (Penguin, 2006)

“Crossroads of Freedom: Antietam” by James McPherson (Oxford University Press, 2002)

“America’s War: Talking About the Civil War and Emancipation on Their 150th Anniversaries,” an anthology of historical fiction, speeches, diaries, memoirs, biography, and short stories, edited by national project scholar Edward L. Ayers and co-published by NEH and ALA.

Dr. Michael Kreyling

Dr. Michael Kreyling, Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Professor of English, Vanderbilt University, will lead all five discussions.  He is the author of seven books, which include Figures of the Hero in Southern Narrative (1986), Understanding Eudora Welty (1999), and Inventing Southern Literature (1998), which won the Eudora Welty Prize, and most recently The South That Wasn’t There, which explores a series of literary situations in which memory and history seem to work in odd and problematic ways.

Kreyling is currently working on rituals of Civil War memory that are emerging with the 150th anniversary, specifically counterfactual novels of the war.

The “Let’s Talk About It” discussion series will begin on Tuesday, Jan. 17, 2012 at 6:30 p.m. with a discussion of “March” by Geraldine Brooks.  For complete details or to register, please visit www.brentwood-tn.org/library or contact Robyn Zandi, 31-0090 ext. 8510, and/or email zandir@brentwood-tn.org.