The New York Times-20080127-Up Front

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Up Front

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Geoffrey C. Ward, whose assessment of Drew Gilpin Faust's This Republic of Suffering is this issue's cover review, has written books about baseball, the West and 19th-century suffragists, as well as three books on Franklin D. Roosevelt.

His television work includes scripts on Huey Long, the Shakers and Frank Lloyd Wright. (And despite this immersion in all things American, Ward has also managed to write two books on the tigers of India.) But he is probably best known as the principal writer on Ken Burns's 1990 PBS series The Civil War (for which Ward won the first of his five Emmys).

The Civil War is the most important thing that ever happened to us as Americans, Ward wrote in an e-mail message, and Faust's book is remarkable, he said, because it forces us to look at this much-analyzed event in a wholly new way. Ward called Faust -- who recently became the first woman to be Harvard's president -- a fine scholar, filled with fresh ideas, and added, My only worry is that Harvard's gain will be history's loss.

[Illustration]DRAWING (DRAWING BY JOE CIARDIELLO)