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forefront of the author’s analysis, which strives to simultaneously attest to both the independent “power of art” and to the fact that “Maryland, My Maryland” happened to be “the right piece, in the right place, at the right time” (p. 302). Readers resistant to the idea that a song’s appeal can exist separately from its context, if even in part, might question whether the allure of this famous song can be credited more to perceptions of its authenticity than to its felicitous combination of notes and lyrics. Much of the narrative arc in Maryland, My Maryland follows familiar contours of Civil War patriotism. “Maryland, My Maryland” was born in the aftermath of Baltimore’s Pratt Street Riot, just as, Davis explains, a naïve “bargain patriotism” was giving way to a less innocent posture (p. 9). It reached its highpoint during Robert E. Lee’s Maryland Campaign in September 1862, when hopes of Confederate victory burned brightest (and Maryland itself seemed within the Confederacy’s grasp). But defeat at Antietam took the bite out of the song as a southern anthem. In one remarkable passage, Davis shows how the same Confederate soldiers who proudly sung “Maryland, My Maryland” as they crossed over the Potomac into the state subsequently rebuked the bands who attempted to play it to them again on their retreat to Virginia. Rather than dismiss the song altogether, however, Confederates shifted its meaning to a new “patriotism of sacrifice and suffering” that highlighted the tyranny of the North and the victimhood of the South (p. xxiii). Then, as their chances of victory dwindled, inflation soared, conscription expanded, and desertion increased, the song and its meaning transformed yet again. With Maryland now a “symbolic martyr to the Southern cause,” the song ended the war celebrating a mythical ideal of the South and its imagined past, not its reality (p. xxiv). At times, the extent to which Davis’s examination of “Maryland, My Maryland” complements established accounts of Confederate patriotism and nationalism is striking. If, as Davis suggests, Drew Gilpin Faust’s description of Confederate nationalism is practically interchangeable with his own assessment of patriotic Confederate musical practice then the degree to which Maryland, My Maryland pushes historical debate forward on this issue is debatable (p. 300). Historians are certainly prone to oversimplifying the meaning of patriotic songs in the Civil War, though few are equally prone to overlooking the “fluidity,” or contingencies, of patriotism during the conflict more broadly. Ironically, the more music is contextualized the more it can seem as if it reflects a history we already know. Yet, Davis is not telling a story that has been told. The Confederate state might have failed but Confederate nationalism did not crack so easily. And Maryland, My Maryland’s account of the malleability, attraction, and power of this awkwardly state-specific Confederate anthem goes a long way towards suggesting how the symbols of rebellion had always been capable of outliving its collapse. In the wake of Charlottesville, perhaps we should pay attention.