The Reconstruction period in American history is often portrayed as a seemingly senseless progression of mistakes that culminated in a restoration of almost antebellum-like social structures in the South. In reality, as Lisa Colozza Cocca presents in this volume of the illustrated “Understanding the Civil War” series, Reconstruction was the result of a nation’s people trying to reinvent itself on the fly following a war that cost more blood than virtually every other conflict in American history combined.