Old-Time Stuff Is Not Forgotten

(NYTimes) ... the History channel has two big-ticket specials timed to Memorial Day: “Gettysburg,” on Monday, which relates the story of that battle by telling, in graphic detail, the stories of eight participants, and “Lee & Grant,” on Tuesday. “Lee & Grant” sticks with the familiar template to illuminate the decisions of those two generals, who — evidence of the hazards of working this oft-visited territory — were recently given the same treatment by PBS’s “American Experience” series. But both History and PBS have also found a different path into the Civil War, via series they already had up and running. Continued

Photo: "Civil War soldiers in action," John Goldin & Co., photographer, 1864 (Library of Congress).