Postbellum

For most Europeans, a postbellum world had seemed the self-evident future, says Finland’s president, Sauli Niinistö.

Midway through Donald McCaig’s unexpectedly diverting novel, “Rhett Butler’s People,” a black man about to be lynched in the post-bellum South asks Rhett to please shoot him dead before the mob breaks into the jail and does worse.