Why a Book on Parallel Lives: A Tale of Two Centuries But for the accident of birth, any one of us could have been born in another time and place. Given the time that man has inhabited the earth and the vastness of the planet, the possibilities are endless. The Civil War is a topic whose fans worldwide are countless. Consequently, a book that takes an up close look at the years preceding, during, and after this great conflict is a subject of great interest to many. More than a few historians have touched upon how in many instances history repeats itself. However, it does not appear that anyone has done a study of the similarities between events of two different centuries especially, not with a description in first person of the events as they occurred. It is only in this format that one can truly appreciate the degree to which history repeats itself. It not only repeats itself in the form of well-known events like the assassinations of Presidents Lincoln and Kennedy but also lesser-known events that true history buffs would know of and appreciate, such as the existence of a child's game involving a hoop in the 1850s, not unlike the hula hoop of the 1950s. Certainly, any hundred-year interval throughout history would yield similar correlations. However, to the modern-day Americans who are potential purchasers of this book, what better hundred-year interval would there be to do a comparison study of than mid-nineteenth-century and mid-twentieth-century America? For this reason, publishing a Book on this subject is the source of great zeal.
