DWD's Reviews

  Originally published in 1942 by Harcourt, Brace and Company, Inc. I read a 2009 re-print published by Konecky and Konecky. Carl Sandburg (1878-1967) In 1940, the famed poet, journalist and author Carl Sandburg won a Pulitzer Prize for his four volume biography Abraham Lincoln: The War Years (published in 1939.) In 1942, his publishers came to him and asked him to re-work the biography into a history of the Civil War in response to America's recent entry into World War II.  The result is a pretty solid history of the Civil War from basically the Union point of view.  Carl Sandburg is best known as a poet and that shines though with some of his prose. From time to time, he comes up with a different and interesting way of telling the story of the war.  The most obvious weakness to this history is the story of African-Americans in the war - the free, the enslaved, the recently freed, the soldiers and others. He mentions them, but does not look at them very hard. To be ...

  Published in 1998 by Enslow Publishers, Inc. Part of a series of 8 books, Confederate Generals of the Civil War was intended to be a classroom or school media center supplement for students to use as a resource. It is not a large book - 112 pages including a glossary, some charts comparing the the Union and the Confederacy, 2 maps and a timeline of the Civil War. There are 10 biographies, arranged in alphabetical order. Each biography is 8-9 pages, including a photograph of the general and a related picture (photo of a battlefield, drawing of a battle scene, etc.).  The biographies themselves are pretty neutral, although it does take some mild stands on a few controversial items. It states in a matter of fact manner that Robert E. Lee was anti-slavery (It was definitely more complicated than that). It puts a lot of blame for Pickett's Charge on Longstreet, not on Lee. And, it gets sappily sentimental in the last paragraph of Pickett's biography. I would rate it as very mild...

Published in 1997 by Publications International, LTD. At first glance, The Blue and the Gray: The Conflict Between North and South 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 g...

Published in May of 2015 by Blackstone Audio Read by Joe Barrett Duration: 8 hours, 29 minutes Unabridged During the Atlanta campaign in the Summer of 1864 Confederate President Jefferson Davis changed the nature of the campaign with the simple stroke of a pen. Up to that point, Union General William Tecumseh Sherman was slowly forcing his way southward towards Atlanta by way of a series of flanking maneuvers. His opponent, Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston, was slowly retreating, hoping to find an opening for a fatal strike against his opponent. Unfortunately for him, Sherman's mistakes were too small to be exploited and eventually Johnston found himself backed up against Atlanta itself. Oliver O. Howard (1830-1909). Photo by Matthew Brady. At this point, President Davis intervened and removed Johnston on July 17, replacing him with John Bell Hood. While Johnston was cautious, Hood was by nature an aggressive general. Also, given the circumstances of Johnston'...

Majestic and Poetic - an Outstanding Experience Published in 2007 by Picador Howard Bahr If you pick up The Judas Field give it about 30 pages. Up to that point I was fairly confused and lost. Then, it suddenly comes together and this book became one of the most powerful books I've read all year. The book features two story lines - one set approximately 20 years after the Civil War and one that consists of flashbacks about the Battle of Franklin. Both are interesting. Bahr's descriptions of the battle contain some of the most poetic descriptions of the most awful things that men can do to one another that I've ever read. Truly beautifully written. On top of that there is an ongoing discussion about the role of God in war. Does he take sides? Has he forsaken both sides? This discussion is not done lightly. These are not post-modernist characters - they believe in God but they must reconcile that belief with the awful experience of war - what they did,...

Tries too hard to set a mood, loses focus on the history. As a history teacher, I love well-written historical fiction. It places the reader right in the story. A judicious author can blend the history and the fiction together in a harmless fashion and tell the story in an accurate and entertaining way. A Separate Country  does not live up to those standards. It it presumptuous of an author of historical fiction to take the first person with a very famous historical figure. Commonly, if a first person perspective is used it is with a fictional character - an aide to a general that witnesses events but does not effect them, for example. In this case, Hicks has taken one of the "name" generals from the Civil War and turned him on his head. He has sacrificed the "historical" in the name of the "fiction." Hicks places John Bell Hood into a series of historic events, some of which are quite true (such as the lottery drawings - many Confederate ex-gene...

Good, thought provoking Published in 1997 by Crown. I n The Warrior Generals: Combat Leadership in the Civil War , Buell analyzes three Confederate and three Union generals with six very different leadership styles. Buell gives a title to each of the six different men and they are: The Yeoman: Ulysses S. Grant The Aristocrat: Robert E. Lee The Knight-Errant: John Bell Hood The Roman: George H. Thomas The Cavalier: John B . Gordon The Puritan: Francis C. Barlow Buell researched this book heavily, including delving into the National Archives to the point that he actually found boxes of papers from the Civil War that had not even been opened since they were packaged and delivered after the war, a fact that I find amazing given the vast number of books written on the war every year. Buell is quite clear in his book that Robert E. Lee was vastly overrated and quite possibly incompetent (he never says it outright but he infers it). I agree that Lee has been overrated by so...