"Fateful Lightning," by Allen C. Guelzo Civil War fever is raging. Last year, the 150th anniversary of the outbreak of the war, brought a number of war-related books, ranging from microstudies of a specific time or theme (including Adam Goodheart's "1861: The Civil War Awakening," and Amanda Foreman's "World on Fire: Britain's Crucial Role in the American Civil War") to macro-­overviews of the whole era, most notably David Goldfield's "America Aflame: How the Civil War Created a Nation." The micro/­macro phenomenon continues this year, with the appearance of a single-theme book like Fergus M. Bordewich's "America's Great Debate" (see the opposite page) and, from the macro perspective, Allen C. Guelzo's sweeping "Fateful Lightning: A New History of the Civil War and Reconstruction." From "Fateful Lightning" Image of poster from New-York Historical Society. A New History of the Civil War and Reconstruction By Allen C. Guelzo Oxford University Press. Paper, $19.95. Guelzo's book is a shining example of the virtues of the macro approach when it is undertaken with energy and efficiency. By panning out and reviewing the events that occurred over several decades, Guelzo offers a useful synthesis of the developing Civil War narrative, from the antebellum slavery debate through the four-year bloody struggle, followed by the decade-­long denouement of Reconstruction. The story, of course, is a familiar one, but there's still no general agreement about its meaning. For instance, Goldfield in "America Aflame" revives the argument, made long ago by Avery Craven and James G. Randall, that the Civil War could have been avoided through rational decisions made by leaders who worked within the resilient American political system. Guelzo replies that, in fact, there was plenty of rationality around - and clever political dealing too - but war broke out anyway. Guelzo takes us back to the founding fathers, who established principles of liberty and democracy that, over time, were interpreted differently in the North and the South. In the North, these principles fostered a belief in free labor and a growing mistrust of human bondage. In the South, they produced a dedication to state rights and a defensive posture on slavery. Disunion and war, always a threat, were long held in abeyance through political compromises that finally proved to be mere Band-Aids over the gaping national wound caused by passionate positioning on the slavery issue. Passionate, Guelzo notes, but entirely sensible to those on each side. Racism and secession seemed logical to the South. The primitive science of the day taught that blacks were intrinsically inferior to whites, a notion that supported slavery. This view also guided the Supreme Court's decision in the Dred Scott case, which stripped blacks of citizenship. The South thought it had a corner on religion. After all, Southerners said, the Old Testament prophets were slave owners, and Noah punished his recalcitrant son Ham by cursing Ham's son Canaan, whose supposedly African descendants therefore deserved being enslaved. As for secession, that followed "the clearest political logic on offer," in Guelzo's words. With the North under the leadership of Abraham Lincoln, a Republican president whose party supported "free soil, free labor, free men," Southerners felt they were acting in the American tradition of liberty by asserting their independence and leaving the Union. The North, for its part, insisted that it was acting reasonably by trying to prevent slavery from growing. Lincoln's argument that a house divided against itself could not stand was based on his view that slavery ran counter to the founders" true attitudes. And so, Guelzo suggests, it was logic, not irrationality, that brought on the war. He writes: "If there is anything that is genuinely appalling in the political context of the Civil War, it is the dominance of the most glittering and hard-edged political rationality. It was the hard edge of that rationality that, in the end, made a final compromise impossible. David S. Reynolds is a distinguished professor at the CUNY Graduate Center. His books include "John Brown, Abolitionist" and "Mightier Than the Sword: "Uncle Tom's Cabin" and the Battle for America."