Two communities in America's Great Valley -- Franklin County, Pennsylvania, and Augusta County, Virginia -- separated by only a few hundred miles, share much in their politics and ways of life. Yet they emerge on opposing sides of a war in which they zealously send their sons to fight and die. Here we see a Civil War that is not the inevitable conflict of rival civilizations, but a human drama, immediate, particular, engrossing. This is history as lived experience, present in a beautifully designed digital archive of letters, diaries, newspaper accounts, military records, maps, images, and music. With cutting-edge technology that makes full use of both the CD-ROM and the Web, The Valley of the Shadow allows us all -- from beginners to buffs to experts -- to navigate the past in ways not possible before. Whether your interests are in the Civil War, Southern history, military history, African-American history, or biography, you can explore them to the fullest here.