The Civil War: Historical Fiction and Popular Media

Join us at RWC – Irvington on Tuesday, March 3rd, 10th and 17th from 1 – 3PM for a Historical Conversation by Keith Kehlbeck.

From Gone with the Wind to Glory and Ken Burns’ PBS series The Civil War, America’s greatest ordeal has been portrayed in books and on screen in countless ways. These media have sometimes presented Civil War events and personalities with anecdotal, sanitized, or exaggerated storylines that reinforce popular narratives. How accurate are historical Civil War novels and films? Is the myth of the “Lost Cause” real—and how has it been promoted over time? How have documentaries shaped public understanding of the causes of war and motivations? This course examines how the Civil War is depicted in books, movies, media, and the myths from the years immediately following the conflict to the present day.

Keith Kehlbeck is a writer, historian, and marketing consultant in the hospitality, nonprofit, and publishing sectors. At the age of 10, his family took a trip to Washington, D.C., sparking what would become a life-long interest in the Civil War. Since then, his passion for studying the Civil War led him to write the critically acclaimed Gone to God: A Civil War Family’s Ultimate Sacrifice, a nonfiction story told with diaries and letters written by soldiers and their family members.