Shirley Samuels is Professor of English at Cornell University.

A study of Civil War iconography is long overdue.... Samuels offers a fertile reading of that symbol system and its slippages. Examining texts of all types--novels, statues, and images--she lays bare the preoccupying anxieties.... Samuels has an intriguing mind, and it is a pleasure to watch it work. Text after text, subhead after subhead, she offers compelling readings and telling juxtapositions of familiar and unfamiliar documents.