DWD's Reviews

Originally published in 1984 by The Free Press. Note: This is a review of the original version of this book, published in 1984 and ending with the first Reagan administration. It has been expanded and updated to include events up to 2012. Soldiers in the Korean War in 1950. Way back in my undergrad days at Indiana University I took a class called American Military History . It was taught by a visiting professor from West Point and this book was an excellent choice for the text for the class. For 30+ years I have carried this book around with me - through 5 different moves and who knows how many book shelves this book was the anchor of my history section because it is quite beefy. But, I decided it was time to clear out some books. Technically, this book was a re-read but I didn't really remember anything from all of those years ago so... The book starts with colonial defense and moves along with the same format up through the early 1980's. There is a chapter about a

Published in 1999 by Wiley and Sons. Roger Mudd, formerly of CBS and NBC news, interviewed five historians about their special topics of expertise. They are all solid interviews that allow the historians to tell why their topics are important. Mudd does a great job of letting the interviews flow along a natural conversational path, but he does interrupt with questions that ask for clarification or challenge a point. The historians are: Gordon Wood discussing the American Revolution; James McPherson discussing the Civil War; Richard White discussing Westward Expansion; David McCullough discussing the Industrial Era; and Stephen Ambrose discussing World War II/Eisenhower/Nixon. This was a lot like sitting down with a talented professor in a coffee shop and letting him/her go on about their favorite topic. They weren't lectures, but more like a conversation. I know the work of four of these five historians and have read quite a bit of McCullough, Ambrose and McPherson. McPherson is

Published in 1973. I n 1973, undoubtedly to prepare for the upcoming 1976 bicentennial of the American Declaration of Independence, BBC reporter and author Alistair Cooke released a book and a television mini-series telling the history of the United States to the U.K. The book and the series came to America as well with the book selling nearly 2 million copies. This massive "coffee table" type book has 393 pages and weighs in at 3 pounds, 9 ounces (compare that to a random paperback book I weighed at just 5 ounces). Photo by Lewis Hine Cooke presents a straight-forward history of America, skimming over lots of details but getting the highlights. This has to be the case when you cover more than nearly 500 years of history in less than 400 pages. He focuses half of the book on the exploration/colonial/Revolutionary War/Constitutional era and it is by far the strongest part of the book. This book is filled with beautiful, sometimes profound photographs. On pages 312-313

Originally published in 2001. The greatest argument among people who study the Civil War isn't who was the best general or what would have happened if Lincoln hadn't have been assassinated or even what would have happened if the Union had lost at Gettysburg. No, the greatest argument is this: What caused the Civil War? For the better part of the last century, the argument has been that the Confederacy seceded in order to protect "their rights". The counter-argument has always been to protect "the right to do what?" For me, the answer has always been a simple one - they fought for their right to own people and to keep African Americans at the bottom of the heap in Southern society. For the Confederate States of America, slavery was the reason to fight. For the Union army, maintaining the Union, with or without slavery, was the reason to fight - a goal claimed many times by Lincoln himself.  There will be arguments that claim that Confederate states secede

Originally printed in 2001. One of my favorite people in history is Levi Coffin. I have visited the Levi Coffin House (an official Historic Site maintained by the state of Indiana) so many times that it feels like I am making a semi-annual pilgrimage when I go.  The thing is, I find myself inspired every time I visit - both as a history lover, a champion of individual rights and as a Christian. Levi Coffin was an instrumental figure in the Underground Railroad and the abolition movement. He was not simply  a theoretical supporter of the movement that wrote letters and collected donations. He helped more than a thousand slaves escape, many of them spending time in his own home. His home in Indiana was even modified so that he could hide ten or more people at a time, if necessary. Here is a picture that I took of a great quote from Levi Coffin that is on the wall of the visitors center at his house in Fountain City:  This short book tells an interesting story of his life fr

Originally published in 2002. As the title states, Clint Johnson has found 50 people from the Civil War (25 from each side) who played an important role, but are generally speaking, not big names. So, you won't find Abraham Lincoln, Jefferson Davis, William T. Sherman or Stonewall Jackson in this book, except in passing.  All of those men would have admitted that they didn't win (or lose) the war by themselves. It was a big war and it involved literally millions of people inside and outside of the military and even outside of the government. Some of those were very helpful and are labeled as "bull's-eyes". Some people, though, got in the way more than they helped. They are the "misfires". Some of the misfires and bull's-eyes that Johnson lists are clearly misfires or bull's-eyes. For example, the first person listed in the book is Union Major William F. Barry. He misidentified Confederate troops at a critical moment in the First Battle of Bu

Union soldiers near the Battle of North Anna in May of 1864. They are on a small bridge. A larger pontoon bridge is behind them. Published in 2014 by Blackstone Audio. Read by Grover Gardner. Duration: 14 hours, 11 minutes. Unabridged. Joseph Wheelan's Bloody Spring is a look at General Grant's Overland Campaign from May to June in 1864. This was Grant's first experience against Robert E. Lee and he brought a change in strategy to the Eastern Theater. Rather than try to defeat Lee in a single battle like the previous generals, Grant decided that it was best to find Lee, engage in a battle and never disengage and let the superior resources and manpower grind Lee's army into surrender. Grant understood that when Lee surrendered the Confederacy would surrender. Wheelan spends little time talking about the causes of the war, but he does offer a short recap before he delves into a lively and interesting narrative history of the forty days of the Overland Campaign. T

Published in August of 2019 by The University of North Carolina Press. Confederate Sergeant Andrew Silas and his slave Silas Chandler pose for a photograph in a studio. Silas Chandler was his body servant until his death. He returned to the front as the body servant of his brother.  Silas Chandler received a pension at at the age of 78 - but not for being a soldier. Instead, it was a pension for "Indigent Servants of Soldiers or Sailors of the Late Confederacy". As the title states, one of the most common myths of "the Civil War had nothing to do with slavery" crowd is that thousands and thousands of African-Americans served in organized units in the Confederate Army. To be fair to the mistaken people that advocate for this position, there were African-American people traveling with the Confederate Army. They were not there as volunteers - they were there as body servants to their masters. There were also a great number of slaves that were commandeered by

Published in 1991 by Scholastic. 93 pages of text.  9 pages of a bibliography, a glossary, an index and picture credits. A photo from the book of a Union hospital in Washington, D.C.  Behind the Blue and Gray is a simple introduction to what the average Civil War soldier. I would recommend it for grades 5 and above. However, saying it is for those grades does not mean an adult interested in starting to study the Civil War would not find this book interesting. It is similar to the introductory books that are published by the National Parks that you can find at Civil War battlefields. The book follows the progress of a few Civil War soldiers as they enroll in their respective armies, set up camps, train, march and eventually fight. It also explores what happened to prisoners and the injured. At the end, it discussed the aftermath of the war and ends with a photo of elderly former Union and Confederate soldiers at a reunion gathering. There is not a lot about women in the war a

Published in 2018 by Simon and Schuster Audio Read by Beau Bridges. David Morse, Richard Thomas, Jay O. Sanders and the author. Duration: 18 hours, 5 minutes. The author, Doris Kearns Goodwin Unabridged. Doris Kearns Goodwin often is labeled with the title "presidential historian" and, really, that is a pretty accurate term for her. As a young historian, she worked personally with Lyndon Johnson on his presidential memoirs. She has written about both Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Her book Team of Rivals is a modern classic and has redefined the popular image of the Lincoln administration. In this book, she looks at various qualities of leadership that each of these very different men exhibited. She begins with interesting pre-presidential biographies of each of these men. She focuses on Lincoln's expressed desire to become a person that was worthy of the esteem of his community. Theodore Roosevelt's ceaseless energy and desire to experien

Published by Indiana University Press in 2000. Russell F. Weigley (1930-2004) was a professor of military history at Temple University for 36 years. He wrote a whole bookshelf full of military histories, but only one book that focused exclusively on the Civil War (however, he was working on a multi-volume study of Gettysburg when he passed away).  This is an excellent single volume history of the Civil War saddled with an unfortunate piece of art done in American primitive style that makes it look like it was illustrated by the author's elementary school-aged great-grandchild. I know you aren't supposed to judge a book by its cover, but this cover makes the book look like a children's book. This is far from a children's book.  No more than a page or two is spent on the issues that brought on the war and no more than a page is spent of Reconstruction, but t his is a Civil War history for people who have read a lot of Civil War histories. It tells the same story as

Published in 2007 by Worldwide Library (Worldwide Mystery). Originally Published in 2005. Historian Miranda Lewis has been invited to a Gettysburg re-enactment on the anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg (July 1-3) by her old college roommate, Ginny. She accepts for two reasons - she wants to see her old friend and she has a serious crush on her friend's father, a retired judge and amateur historian who will also be there. She has been nursing this crush since she was 19 years old and he took her on a tour of the battlefield and taught her all about the battle. Things get complicated, though, when Ginny's estranged husband Wiley shows up. He is a hardcore Civil War Confederate reenactor, the sort of man who starves himself to the point of being ill just to look more authentic. The sort of man who decorates his personal vehicle (called the "Battlemobile") with little plastic Civil War army men. Wiley has been gone on the reenactor circuit for a while, traveling f

Originally published in 2013. Union General William Tecumseh Sherman near Atlanta in 1864. This book is aimed at 4th-8th graders. It tells an abbreviated history of the Civil War, featuring a lot of pictures and text boxes. It makes for a disjointed read, but it is really designed to be a kid version of a coffee table book. I was not fond of its description of slavery vs. abolitionism argument on page 6. It takes a neutral stand, meaning that it makes an equal space for the argument for abolitionism and point of view of the slave owners. Really? The description of the Springfield Rifle on page 18 makes it sound like it could be fired accurately up to 500 yards. In reality, it was a lot less than that for the average soldier. Sure, it could kill someone at 500 yards, but in the hands of the average soldier that would be the shot of a lifetime - or an accident. On page 39, it pronounces that Sherman intentionally burned Atlanta. He may have, but if he did he kept it to himself. He di

Published in 2018 by Fulcrum Publishing. In a little more than 100 pages this graphic novel tells the story of eight little-known African Americans who lived trailblazing lives. I had heard of three of them, which made me feel a little more pretty good - a little more informed than the average reader might be. As Gill tells these stories he confronts racial issues head on. However, he does have a clever way of dealing with the word n*****. Whenever that word is used, a stylized caricature of a man in "blackface" is inserted instead. It makes the point and it shows how out of bounds the word is when a picture is used instead of a word. The art is simple and interesting and the stories move at a quick pace. This book would be a great addition to a classroom library. I rate this book 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: STRANGE FRUIT, VOLUME II: MORE UNCELEBRATED NARRATIVES from BLACK HISTORY .

Published in 2018 by Penguin Audio. Read by Ari Fliakos. Duration: 13 hours, 40 minutes. Unabridged. Simply described, this book is an in-depth look at the slavery controversy in the United States from its very beginnings through the Civil War. I am an avid reader of books that explore American slavery and the Civil War. Anyone that denies that slavery wasn't THE issue that pushed America to Civil War is deluding themselves and simply has not read the statements that five of the seceding states (Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia) issued in 1860 and 1861. Slavery was the most discussed item in four of the five declarations (Virginia's brief declaration does not mention many specifics but does refer to "the oppression of Southern Slaveholding states"). As the reader goes through this book it is easy to see that slavery was always a difficult problem for every generation of Americans to deal with. The Founders wrestled with it and ultimately

Published in 1993 by Scholastic. Levi Coffin House, a major stopping point of the Underground Railroad Jim Haskins' introduction to the Underground Railroad is aimed at grades 4-7. It is a solid little history of the origins of the abolitionist movement, the Underground Railroad and slavery. It mostly focuses on the heroes of the abolitionist movement, but it does its best to try to work in a lot of individual stories of the Underground Railroad. For example, I enjoyed the letter that Jermain Wesley Loguen wrote to his former owner (he had run away) when she demanded that he pay for himself. It was the perfect blend of snark and indignant refusal. The longest biography in the book goes to Harriet Tubman with Frederick Douglass coming in a close second. That is appropriate since their stories are extraordinary. Haskins does a real solid job of introducing the two real-life people that the most famous African American characters in Uncle Tom's Cabin are based on and then

Published in 2013 by Eastern National Manuelito (c. 1818 - 1893) One of the best things about visiting a National Park is visiting the book section of the gift shop. If you visit a Civil War-related site, the book sections are a rare treasure trove of high quality books all gathered in one place. Nestled in among the books are a series of attractive books printed by Eastern National. Physically, they remind me of the old style of National Geographic. They are bound similarly and, most importantly, they are chock full of color photographs like National Geographics were. The pictures are truly the strong point in this book, however. The text of the book is a series of essays written by different authors from the points of view of several different Native American groups. There is a lot of overlap and a lot of gaps because they are not edited together into a coherent narrative. The perspective provided by the book is a welcome one, but the book would have been much strengthened

Published in 1959 by J.B. Lippincott Company. Confederate Colonel John S. Mosby (1833-1916) Back in the 1950's and 1960's several publishing houses put out series of biographies aimed at upper elementary students. The most famous of these was Random House's Landmark Series . They were small hardback books with thick pages and lots of line drawings. They were long on action and short on analysis. This book is similar in every way to that series except that it was printed by the J.B. Lippincott Company. There is literally nothing about John Mosby's childhood in this biography, which is a little odd since there was a similar series at the same time, with the same physical format called Childhood of Famous Americans published by Bobbs-Merrill. John Mosby was a Confederate cavalry officer in the Civil War who became a Partisan Ranger. Partisan Rangers were irregular forces, not really part of the armies they supported and able to take shares of any spoils of war tha

Published in 1997 by Publications International, LTD. Union General Ambrose Burnside (1824-1881) At first glance, this is a typical coffee table book about the Civil War. There are tons of them - I ought to know, I own several myself. They are all over-sized, hardback and full of great pictures. Most have lots of details about the battles and the strategies of the war and a little about topics such as the daily life of the soldier, medicine of the time, the use of spies or daily life in camp. This book is set up exactly in the reverse. It is all about those other topics, discusses the overall strategy and offers very little about the specifics of any actual battles. There are literally no battle maps. But, that doesn't stop this from being a great book. It is a great book precisely because it doesn't treat those other topics as interesting filler - it treats them as topics that can stand alone and are worthy of exploration.  Every page is colored either blue or gr

Published in 2018 by Random House Audio. Read by Fred Sanders and the author, Jon Meacham. Duration: 10 hours, 55 minutes. Unabridged. LBJ and MLK discussing Civil Rights strategy -  Jon Meacham takes a look at Presidential leadership from the Civil War onward, particularly the power of the President to lead the country to "do the right thing" in a time of crisis. He has a particular focus with how the President deals with people who want to abuse the rights of others. Well, to be completely honest, Meacham does not have a complete clear thesis in this book and I am not 100% sure what his overall goal was. What it turned out to be was an interesting, rambling work that looked at several crisis points in American history and how the politicians, mostly presidents, responded. He looked at Lincoln (the source of the title), Grant during Reconstruction and the rise of the KKK, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Eisenhower, JFK and LBJ