Battle Lines

"One of the challenges (and joys) of teaching survey courses is connecting students to the human story. One cannot ignore the big historiographical picture, of course, or the hope that students will come away from these courses with some degree of historical literacy. Nonetheless, getting students to see historical events in terms of what were once living, breathing human beings, rather than as an abstract set of dates and questions to be analyzed, then disregarded at the cessation of the course, is where the real pedagogical magic happens. Graphic novels have offered a new, if not entirely uncontroversial, way of communicating this information to students.Battle Lines: A Graphic History of the Civil War is no exception. Written by Bancroft Prize-winning historian Ari Kelman and award-winning illustrator Jonathan Fetter-Vorm, Battle Lines traces a cast of characters from the 1808 ban on the importation of new slaves to the trials of Reconstruction. It seeks not only to capture the causes and consequences of the Civil War but also to unpack the complexities of why soldiers on both sides fought. It is often difficult to get students to understand that the causes of secession and motivations to fight were not always the same. The aspirations ofBattle Lines are ambitious, and would prove challenging to a scholarly monograph. This graphic novel does not follow a singular narrative. Those who are dismissive of graphic novels might be surprised at its sophistication and complexity, even if they are already familiar with the high quality of Kelman's scholarship. But in this case, a meticulous scholar and a talented illustrator work together to successfully convey the nuances of a complex topic. Abolitionists, slaves, planters, Unionists, and Confederates are all present in the book. So too is material culture. Renderings of objects are carefully placed, so as to add to the reader's sense of living in the story. For this reason, Battle Lines may be suitable as a pedagogical tool in surveys or Civil War courses as well as in courses that explore public history or material culture. The casual nonspecialist reader will appreciate not only the vivid history but also the careful character development. A soldier's heartache becomes the reader's: the loss, the destruction, and the devastation. Combined with battlefield photographs, such as those by Matthew Brady, the book makes the human cost of the war painfully real. Even serious students and scholars of the Civil War are likely to appreciate the graphic novel's intricacy, and the life it breathes into its subject."-Jessica M. Parr, University of New Hampshire, H-Net

"A remarkable achievement both as a work of history and visual literature, providing a broad overview of the complex circumstances that gave rise to the bloodiest conflict in American history, while simultaneously making those deaths meaningful by capturing fleeting moments amid the slaughter in panels so beautifully wrought as to beggar description."-Scott Eric Kaufman, Salon

"[A] really beautiful, gorgeous graphic novel about the Civil War . . . Lovely, evocative and harrowing . . . I would recommend this book highly."-Gene Demby, NPR's "Pop Culture Happy Hour" podcast

"An amazing piece of work."-Virginia Prescott, New Hampshire Public Radio, "Word of Mouth"

"Battle Lines is not the first graphic novel about the Civil War, but it is one of the most ambitious. Rather than following a single wartime plot, Battle Lines spans from Congress's 1808 ban on the importation of slaves to the end of Reconstruction in 1876. Readers get concise and useful overviews of seminal moments in the war via newspaper pages that precede each chapter. But the authors smartly forgo comprehensiveness by grounding this bold historical spread in episodic chapters . . . This framework helps balance a useful breadth with striking depth."-Kenyon Gradert, Los Angeles Review of Books

"Powerful and evocative . . . This book belongs in every school library in the country and on the shelf of anyone interested in good art, excellent storytelling, and careful scholarship."-Matthew Helmke

"A fascinating look at one of the biggest events in United States history . . .The gut-punches started and they simply didn't end until the conclusion of the book . . . I'd highly recommend it."-Janelle Asselin, Comics Alliance

"Battle Lines brings us the Civil War as we've never seen it before. An inspired blend of images and words, this fresh, vivid history is the perfect primer for students and devotees of America's greatest conflict."-Tony Horwitz, author of Confederates in the Attic and Midnight Rising

"Featuring inspired storytelling and haunting images, Battle Lines is the best graphic novel ever produced about the Civil War."-Josh Neufeld, author of A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge

"Battle Lines is thoughtful, sophisticated, and beautifully wrought. Jonathan Fetter-Vorm and Ari Kelman offer further proof that the graphic novel is a powerful medium for exploring the nuances of history."-Gene Luen Yang, author of American Born Chinese, finalist for the National Book Award

"The artistry of Fetter-Vorm (Trinity: A Graphic History of the First Atomic Bomb, 2013) powerfully captures the devastation that the war wreaked on the country, extending well past the armistice, while the historical context by Bancroft Prize winner Kelman (American Civil War Era History/Penn State Univ.; A Misplaced Massacre: Struggling Over the Memory of Sand Creek, 2013, etc.) provides the contextual depth . . . The power of the art puts the 'graphic' in graphic narrative, with limbs amputated by saws, corpses that could no longer be identified as belonging to one side or another, and battlefields turned to slaughter. Interspersed with these large-scale depictions are vignettes of those touched in various ways by the war, from the well-known poet Walt Whitman to soldiers only known by the journals they left behind. Without the illustrations, the text seems aimed at a young-adult or even younger readership, but the artistic impact extends far beyond. In this gripping graphic narrative, the complexities of history achieve clarity, and the depth of the tragedy has a visceral impact."-Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"In 15 harrowing chapters, Fetter-Vorm and Ari Kelman's graphic take on the Civil War brings home the shattering costs of America's epochal conflict like almost no other single-volume history . . . Poignant and heartbreaking."-Publishers Weekly