Reflections on the Civil War by Bruce Catton. Edited by John Leekley.

Would Serve as an Excellent Introduction to the Civil War

Originally published in 1981.

Bruce Catton (1899-1978) was the top Civil War historian throughout the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. His particular skill was not uncovering new research or having particularly keen new insights, although he did help move the Lost Cause narrative out of the mainstream. He was, first and foremost, a historian with a real gift for writing for the regular reader. He broke down the complex things and made them understandable and interesting.

Reflections on the Civil War was published after Catton passed away. It was pulled largely from tapes of Catton discussing various aspects of the Civil War and then edited by John Leekley. Leekley co-created the Civil War mini-series The Bue and the Gray with Catton.

Catton starts out with the standard discussion of what caused the war and then moves into other topics like why men joined up, daily life for the soldiers in the war, the  was like for the men, how the two armies geared up for the war (mostly as it was already being fought), and more before he gives a short summary of the war. 

Union General Ulysses S. Grant (1822-1885)

The last section concerns some drawings that had recently been uncovered. A young man joined the army in the first rush of enthusiasm after Fort Sumter and had decided to draw everyday pictures of camp life. He was hoping to sell them to newspapers or magazines as part of their war coverage. It turns out that he could not sell any because they were simply too mundane - not enough action and too much regular camp life. Of course, that makes them solid gold for historians.

Catton took the extra step - he researched the soldier and told about his experiences in the war based on the young soldier's writings and regimental histories. I thought this was going to be tedious, but it turned out to be the best part of the book.

This book is very well done. Like I noted before, the book was edited from audio recordings of Catton's lectures and question and answer sessions. He knew his topic so well and the book just flows wonderfully. 

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Reflections on the Civil War by Bruce Catton. Edited by John Leekley.

ZACHARY TAYLOR: A LIFE from BEGINNING to END (Biographies of U.S. Presidents)(kindle) by Hourly History

Published by Hourly History in 2025.

Hourly History specializes in histories and biographies that take a reader about an hour to read. It seems appropriate length for Zachary Taylor, the President with the third shortest time in office (just 16 months).

Taylor had a short and rather vague political career, but his military career was rather lengthy. He fought against the Shawnee under future President William Hentry Harrison on the frontier in the War of 1812 in Indiana, Illinois, and Michigan. 

He fought in the Black Hawk War and served in what would later become Minnesota and Wisconsin establishing and upgrading a series of forts. Later, he fought the Seminoles in Florida and served as the overall commander of American troops in the War. 

He is most famous for his service as one of the two main generals that led the invasion of Mexico in the Mexican War. Taylor crossed from Texas into Northern Mexico, fighting a series of battles, eventually winning the Battle of Buena Vista in February of 1847. That battle cemented his reputation in the American mind and catapulted him to the Presidency in 1848, despite never having voted before and not really having political opinions that alligned strongly with any political party at the time.

On a personal note - one thing Taylor did have going for him was a working knowledge of the what was the American frontier at the time, having served or lived in Texas, Arkansas, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Kentucky, Louisiana, and Mississippi. Taylor was a slave holder but was against the expansion of slavery into the territories taken from Mexico. he knew from personal experience that the climate of those areas were completely incompatible with the plantation style of slavery he practiced at his plantation in Mississippi. 

As I already noted, Taylor took ill in the summer of 1850 and died, probably due to some sort of food poisoning or a form of cholera. This book doesn't look much into the "what ifs" of a longer Presidency for Taylor who was pro-slavery, strongly anti-seccession, and against the spread of slavery. Could he have been the political figure that worked out a great compromise that would have prevented the Civil War?

I rate this short e-book 4 stars out of 5. It's pretty good, considering how short it is. It can be found on Amazon.com here: ZACHARY TAYLOR: A LIFE from BEGINNING to END by Hourly History.

LINCOLN'S GENERALS (Gettysburg Civil War Institute Collection) edited by Gabor S. Boritt

Published by Oxford University Press in 1995.

Lincoln's Generals is a collection of 5 essays written by scholars of various aspects of the Civil War. In this case, they focused on how Lincoln worked with his various generals, mostly the generals of the Army of the Potomac. They are organized in roughly chronological order.

The first essay was very well-written. It was by Stephen W. Sears and concerned Lincoln and McClellan. The weakest, for me, was the second essay, ostensibly about General Hooker. It's focus was really the macho culture of the time that required men to prove themselves manly by exposing themselves to fire. It wasn't a bad essay, but it really was not about the relationship between Lincoln and Hooker.

The other three essays were about Meade, Sherman, and Grant. 

I got an appreciation for the difficulties of Lincoln's political position, especially as the election of 1864 approached. Viewing things from 161 years later, it seems like it was all pre-ordained. The reminder that it was a close thing was welcome.

I rate this collection 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Lincoln's Generals (Gettysburg Civil War Institute Collection) edited by Gabor S. Boritt.

FRANKLIN PIERCE: A LIFE from BEGINNING to END (Biographies of U.S. Presidents) (kindle) by Hourly History

Published in 2025 by Hourly History.

Hourly History's biography of Franklin Pierce offers a concise but comprehensive telling of Pierce's life. He was a politician, but his wife hated Washington, D.C. and spent as much time away from the capital as possible. 

He had two major foreign policy successes - the Gadsden Purchase from Mexico and opening Japan to foreign trade, but I was really interested in his policies that helped lead to the Civil War.

Franklin Pierce is one of that group of 8 Presidents in a row from Van Buren to Buchanan that did not serve more than one term (two died in office) leading up to the Civil War. Some were stronger than others, but, as a group, these Presidents didn't show the kind of leadership needed to push the nation away from Civil War. 

Pierce was a New England Democrat that vociferously took the side of Southern Democrat slaveholders. His working theory was that there needed to be unity in the country and uniting behind slavery was a way to be unified. 

This was unpopular with his New England neighbors and didn't really generate trust among Southern Democrats because they saw the pushback, especially in Kansas. The fighting grew so severe among pro- and anti-slavery forces that it became known as "Bleeding Kansas."

I rate this e-book 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: FRANKLIN PIERCE: A LIFE from BEGINNING to END (Biographies of U.S. Presidents).

AMERICAN HERITAGE NEW ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES: VOLUME 8: THE CIVIL WAR by Robert G. Athearn

Published in 1971 by Fawcett Publications, Inc.

This book was part of a series intended to be a supplement to a history curriculum as part of a classroom library or in a school library. It is part of a multi-volume series. When I was a kid, I would see books like this used for extra credit (outline chapter X, etc.) when I was a kid.

Positives:

The pictures are great. The book title says it is illustrated and it does not lie. There are pictures on almost every page and many of them are the most famous photos, paintings, and drawings of the war.

There is an "Encyclopedic Section" at the end of the book. It has biographies of prominent people of the war and explanations of some of the big ideas, and events of the war. Before the internet, these little encyclopedias about a dedicated topic were extremely helpful.

There is an essay from Bruce Catton between the regular text and the Encyclopedic Section. It is excellent.

Negatives:

There is literally no explanation of the events that led to the Civil War. The first sentence of the book is: "The Confederate bombardment of Fort Sumter sparked a great military conflagration that was to blaze in America for four bitter, bloody years." Then, it proceeds to talk about the post-Sumter military build-up. Page 2 discusses Bull Run and page 3 talks about Fort Donelson. Iti is almost like the war just happened. 

Slavery is almost entirely ignored. Because of this, I would describe this book is a "Lost Cause" lite history. The facts that are presented are accurate, but when you ignore the role slavery played in the Civil War, you are slanting things towards the Confederacy. It's not advocating "Lost Cause" points, but it lends itself towards that interpretation. This is not surprising for a book written in 1971.

The Reconstruction section is also tilted to the side of the former Confederates. 

I rate this mixed bag of a book three stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: AMERICAN HERITAGE NEW ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES: VOLUME 8: THE CIVIL WAR by Robert G. Athearn.

SONGS of AMERICA: PATRIOTISM, PROTEST, and the MUSIC THAT MADE a NATION (audiobook) by Jon Meacham and Tim McGraw

Published in 2019 by Random House Audio.

Read by the authors, Jon Meacham and Tim McGraw.

Duration: 7 hours, 40 minutes.

Unabridged.

It turn out that historian Jon Meacham and country music star Tim McGraw are neighbors. They decided to work together on Songs of America, a book that looks at the role of music in American politics.

They start with songs of the Revolution and work their way forward, hitting songs you've heard of such as The National Anthem (War of 1812) and The Battle Hymn of the Republic (Civil War) and songs you've most likely never heard of. 

Not every song is war related. For example, the anti-lynching song Strange Fruit by Billie Holiday. There is a nicely done section comparing two still-popular songs from the 1980s - Born in the USA by Bruce Springsteen and Proud to Be an American by Lee Greenwood. 

I particularly liked the juxtaposition of two Vietnam era songs: The Ballad of the Green Berets by Sgt Barry Sadler (1966) and Fortunate Son by Creedence Clearwater Revival (1969) show how public perception of the war changed in three short years.

Despite the book having been released during the first Trump Administration, there is literally no mention of Donald Trump in the book.

Jon Meacham provided the bulk of the material for this book. He provided the historical context and the story behind how the song came into being. In the first 1/3 of the book, McGraw had practically no input except for reading the lyrics in a completely uninspired way. In the later sections, with more contemporary songs, McGraw's input was not only more frequent, but often more insightful.

But, the book dragged at times, especially early on. I was disappointed that there were only one or two actual pieces of music in an audiobook about music. Tim McGraw knows his way around many styles of music and I assumed that he would be at least playing the tune of the older songs. Sadly, he does not.

I rate this audiobook 3 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Songs of America: Patriotism, Protest, and the Music That Made a Nation.

SLAPSTICK or LONESOME NO MORE! by Kurt Vonnegut

Originally published in 1976.

Synopsis

In the essay that serves as the prologue to Slapstick, Kurt Vonnegut writes about family, connection, and acceptance. He spends a lot of time talking about his older brother - more than he usually does in his essays. He also talks about his sister - a topic of frequent discussion in his essays. She and her husband both died with days of one another, one of an accident and the other of cancer. Kurt Vonnegut and his wife adopted three of their four children. 

In his essays Vonnegut makes frequent mention of the lack of family connection in our modern world and he thinks we are far the worse off for it. This novel is all about family connection, featuring two physically deformed twins who who are psychically connected.

The twins were kept apart from society in an old mansion on a large estate in order to protect them from society and to protect the reputations of their elite, ultra-rich parents. After all, the "right sort of people" don't have freaks for children.

It was assumed that the children would have mental disabilities. It turns out that they were geniuses, especially when they were physically close to one another...

Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007)

My Review

This is a truly bizarre novel, even by the standards of Kurt Vonnegut. I liked the book in many ways, but I really can't say that it was a great or even a particularly good novel. There are times when it just gets so weird that the story gets buried in its own absurdities.

In one of his essays, Vonnegut graded all of his books up to that point. He gave Slapstick a grade of 'D.' I will do better than that - I give it 3 stars out of 5 (a solid 'C') because it has a lot of heart. 

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Slapstick by Kurt Vonnegut. 

BOUND for CANAAN: THE EPIC STORY of the UNDERGROUND RAILROAD, AMERICA'S FIRST CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT (audiobook) by Fergus Bordewich

Published by Harper Audio.

Read by the author, Fergus Bordewich.

Duration: 5 hours, 29 minutes.

Abridged.

The abridged version of Bound for Canaan hits the highlights of the Underground Railroad movement, but leaves quite a bit out. This is a radically abridged audiobook - fourteen hours of a nineteen hour audiobook were cut out - more than 70% of the book. I did not realize how much it had been abridged until I had already listened to it.

What remains is solid, but more of traditional hero study. The reader learns about the Quakers, Levi Coffin and Harriet Tubman and a few other stalwarts of the movement. Frederick Douglass shows up as an example of the Underground Railroad in action. There is a nod to the importance of women in the movement and how that led to the Women's Suffrage movement. 

The book goes off track a bit when it comes to John Brown of Bleeding Kansas fame. Brown did participate in the Underground Railroad movement, but the book follows him to the Kansas and the violence that he committed there as an abolitionist. It follows with a detailed re-telling of John Brown's attempt to instigate a slave rebellion by seizing the national armory at Harper's Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia).

While these are all things that Brown did, he did them separately from the actions of the Underground Railroad. I know that the author was trying to tie the Underground Railroad to the political climate that led to the Civil War and the eventual liberation of the slaves, but this was clunky. I am going to blame it on the extreme abridgment of the book.

What was left after the abridgement wasn't bad, but it wasn't anything that was groundbreaking, either.

I rate this abridged audiobook 3 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Bound for Canaan: The Epic Story of the Underground Railroad, America's First Civil Rights Movement. 

UNCOMMON VALOR: A STORY of RACE, PATRIOTISM, and GLORY in the FINAL BATTLES of the CIVIL WAR by Melvin Claxton and Mark Puls

Published in 2005 by John Wiley and Sons, Inc.

The Emancipation Proclamation was effective on January 1, 1863 - it included a provision that former slaves were to "be received into the armed service of the United States". The Union Army was a little slow to enact this provision, but by 1864 there were plenty of African American Union soldiers ready to go into the field. Uncommon Valor follows one of those units during the Petersburg campaign of 1864-1865.

This history primarily follows Christian Fleetwood, an African American Baltimore clerk. Fleetwood was born free, but living in a slave state was a constant reminder of his second class status. He had been considering joining the army for a long while, trying to determine if it would be a blow for freedom, or just choosing to support one oppressive regime in order to fight an even more oppressive regime. If that was the case, he might as well sit it out and let both sides clobber one another.

Sgt. Major Christian Fleetwood (1840-1914)
in the year 1900. 

After eight months of indecision, Fleetwood joined up. Using Fleetwood's autobiography, the authors tell the story of his training, his concerns about unequal pay, and his frustrations with inconsequential assignments. He was frustrated with their lack of action - he was sure it was because the higher-ups feared that they would not fight well. 

Eventually, though, they were given more and more assignments, including probes into the outer defenses of the capital of the Confederacy itself. 

In the summer of 1864, General Grant determined that he would push Lee's army continuously until he destroyed it or Lee surrendered. Lee had to defend Richmond at all costs, so it was starting to become a static line, almost like a World War I line of trenches. 

Grant ordered a quick attack on Petersburg, a large train junction town more than 20 miles south of Richmond. The theory was that if the Union took Petersburg and stop the trains bringing in supplies, it could quickly starve out Lee's army. 

Fleetwood wanted action - now he had it. He would serve in multiple engagements and eventually earn the Congressional Medal of Honor for his part in the Battle of New Market Heights.

All of these battles and maneuvers are pretty well-described, but maps, even poor ones, would have been helpful. I am always a fan of lots of maps in my Civil War histories - it just helps the reader understand things so much better.

Besides the maps, this book really needed a section that discussed what the main people mentioned in the book did after the war. It didn't need a lot of detail, but something would have been nice.

I rate this history 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: UNCOMMON VALOR: A STORY of RACE, PATRIOTISM, and GLORY in the FINAL BATTLES of the CIVIL WAR by Melvin Claxton and Mark Puls.

THE FEARLESS BENJAMIN LAY: THE QUAKER DWARF WHO BECAME the FIRST REVOLUTIONARY ABOLITIONIST (audiobook) by Marcus Rediker

Published in 2017 by Brilliance Audio.
Read by Cornell Womack.
Duration: 7 hours, 2 minutes.
Unabridged.

As the title states, Benjamin Lay (1682-1759) was indeed a Quaker and a dwarf. He grew up in the Quaker faith in England, learned how to spin cloth and sew gloves and then took those skills to see and became a sailor. Eventually, he settled in Barbados and became a merchant. Barbados was a plantation colony and Lay got to know several of the slaves and their owners and the experience turned him into an abolitionist, a concept that was nearly unknown in a world where slavery was commonplace.

Lay moved to Philadelphia and naturally joined the local Quakers. Lay had always been an agitator back in England and was often in trouble with local church officials for questioning what they were teaching. Now, he ramped things up considerably in the hopes of convincing the Quakers that slavery was an evil that should not be tolerated in their midst.

He published an anti-slavery book that was published by Benjamin Franklin - a fact that Franklin kept secret because being anti-slavery was a radical idea. Later, Franklin himself became a public face for anti-slavery but Lay was far ahead of him.

Lay also protested physically and verbally at every Quaker meeting (service) that he attended. He called out the slave owners by name and was often punished for it.

He ended up living in a little hut on the edge of Philadelphia where he refined his beliefs ever further and became a vegan because he did not want to harm any living creature.

This bare bones outline of his life seems radical and interesting, but the presentation in the book was not. This is one of those biographies that seeks to include every detail of its subject's life and in doing so becomes his or her definitive biography. It's a worthy goal, but the first 2-3 hours of this book featured a whole lot of citations of church paperwork about whether or not Benjamin Lay was in good standing or not and what he would have to do to return to good standing. It was tedious. 

The reading by Cornell Womack was subpar. He has a distinctive voice, but he often reads mundane things (like lists) as if they are dramatic moments. It got old, especially when combined with the excessive detail.

I rate this audiobook 3 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: The Fearless Benjamin Lay: The Quaker Dwarf Who Became the First Revolutionary Abolitionist.

VICKSBURG, 1863 by Winston Groom

Originally published by Knopf in 2009.

Winston Groom will always be best known as the author of Forrest Gump, but he should be equally well known as the author of a series of well-told American histories. Included in those histories is a trilogy of Civil War histories that focus on the Western Theater of the war.

Vicksburg 1863 is the second book in the trilogy, but it can be easily read as a stand-alone history. After a short introduction to the war itself, it follows Grant's campaign to take the Mississippi River away from the Confederacy, beginning with a mess of a battle in Missouri that proved nothing of any importance except that Grant was game to fight and push forward, even if the conditions were not perfect.

That, it turns out, was pretty much the key to Grant's eventual success in this campaign and in the war.

From there, we follow Grant through Kentucky, into Tennessee and the terrible Battle of Shiloh. Although ultimately successful, this marked a low point for Grant because he nearly lost his army. His immediate superior came to Shiloh to supervise him and killed most of the momentum of the campaign

Eventually, Grant regained his command (his superior officer was promoted to a desk position in the Eastern Theater) and began his campaign to remove the last major obstacle for Union control of the Mississippi River - Vicksburg, Mississippi.

Vicksburg was a challenge due to its location on an imposing cliff on a massive bend in the Mississippi River. The Confederate military placed cannons on the cliff that threatened any ship that dared to try to pass by. This book details the many efforts he made to bypass Vicksburg, including attempts to build a canal to reroute the Mississippi and an attempt to go through the swamps around Vicksburg. Eventually, he crossed the river south Mississippi and quickly moved his army to cut off Vicksburg, lay siege to it while also engaging and driving away any Confederate troops that could have helped to lift the siege.

Some people will argue with Groom's assertion that Grant did have bouts of drunkenness during the campaign. He describes a rather wild bender featuring Grant cruising through the swampy rivers north of Vicksburg during a lull during the siege, switching boats, and looking for more and more booze. Grant's defenders will deny it all, Grant's detractors will claim it was probably even worse. I go with the simple knowledge that addiction is powerful and Grant often brought along people that kept him accountable. If those people weren't around, I can easily imagine him falling off the wagon. Whether it was a wild run through the swamps or a binge drunk in the corner of a cabin...well, that depends on who told the story back then and who is writing the story now.

I rate this history 5 stars out of 5. It reads as easy as a novel. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Vicksburg, 1863 by Winston Groom.

See my review of Groom's Shiloh, 1862 here. 

WILD BILL HICKOK: A LIFE from BEGINNING to END (kindle) by Hourly History

Published by Hourly History in November of 2024.

Hourly History offers free e-books every week. Each of the books take about an hour to read and the smaller topics are really quite good. The series is good for things you want to know more about, but you don't want to read a 400 page book on the topic.

There is probably a large book about Wild Bill Hickock (1839-1876), but I don't want to read it. This length made for a perfectly enjoyable and interesting read.

Hickock started out fighting in the pre-Civil War Bleeding Kansas conflict on the anti-slavery side, worked as a guide, a hunter, a sheriff, and eventually ended up being shut in the back of the head while playing poker in Deadwood in the Dakota Territory by a man who was too afraid to fight Hickock in a duel.

I rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Wild Bill Hickock: A Life from Beginning to End. 

TRAVELS with GEORGE: IN SEARCH of WASHINGTON and HIS LEGACY (audiobook) by Nathaniel Philbrick

Published in 2021 by Penguin Audio.
Read by the author, Nathaniel Philbrick.
Duration: 9 hours, 34 minutes.
Unabridged.

George Washington looked at the newly formed United States of America and saw what it had always been - 13 disunited states with nothing to bind them together. Washington may not have been the deepest-thinking founding father, but some things he just "knew" deep in his bones. What did he know in this case? He knew that they actually all did have something in common. They all had George Washington in common.

So, George went on a series of extended trips around the states until he had visited all 13 of them and he gave them a visible introduction/reminder (it depended on the state and the citizens) of what the new United States of America was all about. Travels with George is the story of those tours.

Each state had its own issues. For example, Rhode Island wasn't even a state when the started traveling - it was holding out. The Southern states, especially away from the ports, were always a little separate from the main political action between Virginia, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts. Washington was aware of this and mostly traveled over rutted, muddy, rough roads south of Virginia. This also meant he was traveling in areas that were barely mapped. That had to be tough on a man in his late fifties.

This is not just a whimsical fanboy look at this tour - it discusses the dangerous politics of the time (Rhode Island was one of the dangers) and it discusses the uncomfortable topic of slavery thoroughly and honestly in my opinion. 

This is a thoughtful and enjoyable book. I rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: TRAVELS with GEORGE: IN SEARCH of WASHINGTON and HIS LEGACY by Nathaniel Philbrick.

LIFE AFTER POWER: SEVEN PRESIDENTS and THEIR SEARCH for PURPOSE BEYOND the WHITE HOUSE (audiobook) by Jared Cohen

Published by Simon and Schuster Audio in 2024.
Read by Kevin R. Free.
Duration: 14 hours, 4 minutes.
Unabridged.

In Life After Power Presidential historian Jared Cohen looks into the post-Presidential lives of seven Presidents and their quests for some sort of meaning after having one of the most important jobs you can have.

Some Presidents fade away due to health reasons, like Reagan. Others are eager to resume their former lives, like Washington. But, others still feel like they have something more to offer or have unfulfilled goals.

The seven Presidents he looked at are: Thomas Jefferson, John Quincy Adams, Grover Cleveland, William Howard Taft, Herbert Hoover, Jimmy Carter, and George W. Bush.

I have enjoyed hearing about John Quincy Adams' post-Presidential life ever since I first read John F. Kennedy's Profiles in Courage 30+ years ago. I've read more than one book about him and this re-telling is quite good. 

A photo of John Quincy Adams 
taken in 1844.

Jimmy Carter's lengthy post-Presidency is remarkable for how amazingly hard-headed he has been. Carter follows his conscience and lets the political consequences be damned. Cohen notes that Carter did not actually found Habitat for Humanity - he just joined it early on and is easily its most famous and perhaps longest term volunteer.

George W. Bush has done almost the opposite. He lived a very public life for years and has since retreated into more solitary pursuits such as painting. He has said almost nothing about politics in the almost 16 years since he left office.

Each of these men had a different reaction to leaving office. Some left after 2 successful terms, some after experiencing disappointment and 4 of them were defeated after just one term (this is what inspired Cleveland's determination to run again - and win.) I found some to be more interesting than others but, taken a whole, this is a solid set of mini-biographies.

I rate this book 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: LIFE AFTER POWER: SEVEN PRESIDENTS and THEIR SEARCH for PURPOSE BEYOND the WHITE HOUSE by Jared Cohen.

BASS REEVES: TALES of the TALENTED TENTH, no. 1 by Joel Christian Gill

 Published by Fulcrum Publishing in 2014.

Artist and author Joel Christian Gill is writing and illustrating a series of graphic novels that look into the lives of lesser known, exceptional African Americans. His inspiration is this quote from W.E.B. DuBois: "The Talented Tenth rises and pulls all that are worth saving up to their vantage ground." In other words, some will rise up and inspire/lead the rest. This is Gill's way of providing inspiration.

Bass Reeves was a legendary lawman in the Old West. He was a Deputy U.S. Marshal that chased down bad guys who would flee into Indian Territory (Oklahoma and Kansas) to hide from law enforcement in the neighboring states. If you've seen either of the two versions of the movie True Grit, that is the exact situation. The character Rooster Cogburn would have been real-life Bass Reeves' co-worker if Cogburn were a real person.

The graphic novel tells about Reeves' childhood as a slave in Arkansas, how he escaped during the Civil War (he was brought along to work as a body servant for a Confederate officer) and eventually lived for a while with Indians in the Oklahoma and Kansas Territories. He was hired to help deal Marshals deal with Indians and eventually he was deemed to be so helpful and so good at his job that the local federal judge went against all of the normal conventions and made Bass Reeves a marshal.

It turns out that Marshal Bass Reeves was very, very good at his job - maybe the best.

The book addresses racial issues in a couple of clever ways. Whenever the word n***** is used, a stylized caricature of a man in "blackface" is inserted. Secondly, whenever Reeves is confronted by racists, they are partially or completely illustrated as crows with angry red eyes. There are crows fleeing the law, crows in court, etc.

The problem with this story is that although Reeves lived an interesting and amazing life, the book is kind of flat. 

I rate this graphic novel 3 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: BASS REEVES: TALES of the TALENTED TENTH, no. 1 by Joel Christian Gill.

See my review for a different book in this series HERE.

SLAVERY, RESISTANCE, FREEDOM (Gettysburg Civil War Institute Books collection) edited by Gabor Boritt and Scott Hancock.

 

Published in 2007 by Oxford University Press.

The book consists of six essays about the experience of African Americans from the early American period through Reconstruction. 

They are arranged in chronological order and, as is the way with all collections, of varying quality. I did not enjoy either of the two essays by one of the editors, Scott Hancock. I did enjoy reading two of them quite a bit.

There are two strong essays that read more like small chapters from a Civil War history  about the United States Colored Troops (USCT) - the segregated units of black soldiers led by white officers. 

The last essay was by Reconstruction expert Eric Foner. It was a bit tedious to read, but it ruthlessly lays to rest that old Confederate and neo-Confederate lie that Black Reconstruction (when Blacks could actually vote and the old leaders of the Confederacy were not allowed to run for office) just elected illiterate field hands to the highest offices. The men Foner describes were mostly (80% plus) educated to at least the level of the average state legislators in the North and some were highly educated and exceptional men.

I rate this collection 3 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: SLAVERY, RESISTANCE, FREEDOM (Gettysburg Civil War Institute Books collection) edited by Gabor Boritt and Scott Hancock.

McCLELLAN and FAILURE: A STUDY of CIVIL WAR FEAR, INCOMPETENCE and WORSE by Edward H. Bonekemper, III

 

Originally published in 2007.
Published in 2010 by McFarland and Company, Inc.

If you are a student of the Civil War, George B. McClellan is a conundrum at best.

After the Frist Battle of Bull Run (Manassas) in July of 1861, the poorly trained Union Army had fled back to Washington, D.C. They were basically a semi-organized mob awaiting someone to take the lead.

Lincoln looked around and felt that the leadership team that lost at Bull Run was not going to provide a credible lead general so he looked around the Eastern Theater for anyone else with the aura of success.

George B. McClellan had a bit of success in Western Virginia and wrote a lot of reports that made him seem an even better General than he was so Lincoln looked to him to retrain and refit the Army of the Potomac (the main Union Army in the East.)

Statue of McClellan outside of the
city hall in Philadelphia. It was 
dedicated in 1894.  I have no idea
why they felt he deserved this honor.

When I have talked with students about McClellan, I like to compare him to a nervous guy who restores cars. He finds a junker with lots of potential, restores it, and then is afraid to take it out and drive it (the entire purpose of a car) because it might get wrecked again. His men loved him for that - they didn't want to go out and fight and die in a pointless battle. But it was up to McClellan to find a way to take the fight to the enemy and the purpose of an army is to fight, to kill people and blow up things, not to drill and drill and drill while the enemy sits just a few miles away in the middle of the war. 

McClellan took over 8 months to rebuild the army before he took it out to fight. It was the largest army of the entire Civil War and was magnificently well-supplied.  His predecessor had only been in charge of the same army for about 6 weeks when he took to the field. 

Bonekemper documents McClellan's excuses, his time wasted on political lobbying, writing political advice to the President, and his constant inflation of the size of Confederate armies. Bonekemper also makes a strong case that McClellan didn't want to push too hard against the Confederacy because he was pro-slavery and that he let another Union Army be defeated at the Second Battle of Bull Run in August of 1862 out of jealousy.

Once again - the most important general in the U.S. Army refused to engage the enemy because he sympathized with their war aims and he let an entire Union army be defeated when he was ordered to provide assistance because he was angry that the other army had an independent command.

Did McClellan make up for that by being a brilliant field general? No. His own men (generals and even privates) noted that he led from far behind the lines and rarely directed the men once the fighting started.

His last battle of any size was Antietam. Have you ever seen a karate movie where the group of bad guys engage the good guy by taking turns so he can defeat them all one at a time? That's how McClellan engaged with Robert E. Lee's much smaller Army of Norther Virginia - one brigade at a time and Lee basically fought them all to a draw - one brigade at a time.

In a modern army, McClellan may have had found a place dealing with logistics and training - procuring supplies and recruiting soldiers, training them and sending them to the front. But, that was not how things worked in the Civil War.

Of course, Bonekemper lays all of this in detail with the original sources and quotes. A lot of historians give McClellan a pass of sorts. To be honest, I don't know why. This book makes it clear that they shouldn't - he was among the worst of the Union generals.

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: McCLELLAN and FAILURE: A STUDY of CIVIL WAR FEAR, INCOMPETENCE and WORSE by Edward H. Bonekemper, III.

UNDERGROUND AIRLINES (audiobook) by Ben H. Winters

 

Published in 2016 by Hachette Audio.

Read by William DeMerritt.

Duration: 9 hours, 28 minutes.
Unabridged.

Synopsis:

Underground Airlines is set in the year 2015 in an alternate historical timeline. This is a world where the American Civil War almost happened but did not. In the real historical timeline, an amendment to the Constitution called the Crittenden Compromise was proposed in December of 1860 as the first Confederate states were seceding. It preserved slavery, limited its spread and clarified the role of the federal government in returning runaway slaves. The Crittenden Compromise was not taken seriously by most people and it failed.

In this alternate history, the Crittenden Compromise was taken  seriously because President-elect Lincoln was assassinated in Indianapolis as he was traveling to his inauguration in Washington, D.C. The shock of the assassination brought all of the states back together to negotiate and a version of the Crittenden Compromise passed. There was no Civil War and American slavery continues in 4 states on into the 21st century (Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and a combined North/South Carolina.

The protagonist of the book is an escaped slave turned into a hunter of escaped slaves. He is working undercover using the name Jim in Indianapolis, Indiana tracking down an escaped slave. He's bothered a bit because the paperwork for this slave is very incomplete and this is rare. Usually, slaves are meticulously tracked, literally tattooed, bar coded and even chipped. 

Jim is nervous because the incomplete file. But, as you can imagine, he's not happy being an escaped slave who hunts down escaped slaves - but he has no choice. He is chipped with a device in his neck that tracks him and, with the flip of a switch, can kill him. It puts him an emotionally painful paradox - in order to maintain his freedom he must catch others.

Jim meets all kinds of people as he searches through Indianapolis - members of the Underground Airlines (the modern successor to the Underground Railroad movement of the 1800s), militant anti-slavers, militant pro-slavers, a white woman searching for the love of her life (an escaped slave), members of the black market that exists in freedman neighborhoods, and more. 

Still, once he finds out what is going on, it involves more than he could ever imagine and makes him go where he never thought he would go...

My review:

I am a fan of:

1) alternate histories,

2) study of the Civil War,

3) my adopted hometown - Indianapolis.

This means I was pretty much perfectly set up to enjoy this book and I did. This was a well-told story. I enjoyed learning about how this alternate world was different and the same. For example, Michael Jackson is a big deal in this alternate world, too.

But, the United States is technologically behind the rest of the world by a few years due to anti-slavery boycotts by the rest of the world and lack of technical innovation coming from America itself. It's about 20 years behind and not really an economic leader in anything except the production of cotton and cotton clothing.  America's big ally is South Africa, with its policy of apartheid.

It's clear that Ben H. Winters knows his way around Indianapolis. Indy is my adopted hometown - I've lived here for 30 years. Every bit of Indianapolis he describes makes sense historically. 

I enjoyed this book. I rate it 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: UNDERGROUND AIRLINES by Ben H. Winters.

PATHOGENESIS: A HISTORY of the WORLD in EIGHT PLAGUES (audiobook) by Jonathan Kennedy

 

Published by Random House Audio in April of 2023.
Read by the author, Jonathan Kennedy.

Duration: 9 hours, 23 minutes.
Unabridged.

Kennedy presents a compelling argument that disease has had a profound impact on world history by just telling a history of Europe from the days of cavemen up until now.

The first 45 minutes or so of this audiobook seemed to be wandering around and not going anywhere, but Kennedy was laying a strong foundation for the rest of the book.

The book makes it painfully obvious that humanity has bounced from one biological disaster to another. Humanity has adapted (either by behavior - like building sanitation systems to deal with body waste to control cholera) or biologically by simply having a large body count until those with immunity can rebuild (the Black Plague is a prime example.)

Kennedy persuasively argues that infection and disease helped the rise of Christianity, the rise of Islam, the end of feudalism, the rise of capitalism, and the European conquest of the Americas. Infection and disease helped create the system of African slavery in the New World and also prevented the European colonization of African until the late 1800s.

This is a very good book. I rate it 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: PATHOGENESIS: A HISTORY of the WORLD in EIGHT PLAGUES by Jonathan Kennedy.

MY NAME IS SALLY LITTLE SONG (audiobook) by Brenda Woods

 

Book edition originally published in 2006.
Audiobook published in 2019 by Listening Library.
Read by Asmeret Ghebremichael.
Duration: 3 hours, 0 minutes.
Unabridged.

Synopsis:

This short piece of historical fiction focuses on a slave family in Georgia in the 1790s. The main character is Sally. She has a brother, a mother and a father. The one thing that this family has going for them is that their owners have a policy of not breaking apart families.

That is the policy until relatives of the owners find themselves struggling financially. In a couple of days, Sally and her brother and 3 other slaves are going to be sent to the other plantation to help it get back on its feet again. 

The family decides to run away together rather than be split apart.

After some discussion with a friendly house slave who has done some traveling with the family, they decide not to head north. They haven't seen a map but they know that the trip across northern Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Maryland to get to Pennsylvania is just too far.

However, rumor has it that if they can make it to Florida (at the time, Florida was owned by Spain), they would be welcome to live with the Seminoles...

My Review:

The author, Brenda Woods

This short book would be an excellent addition to any history classroom or school library. It has compelling characters, provides details but does not wallow in them, and is very honest about early American history from the point of view of slaves and Native Americans. 

There are a variety of characters and they don't all hit the stereotypes. For example, not all of the slaves are sympathetic characters. 

I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: MY NAME IS SALLY LITTLE SONG by Brenda Woods.

Note: I reviewed this book because I read about it an article about Florida book bans in schools. I checked it out and this teacher doesn't find anything objectionable about this book. Here is a link to another article with a list of 176 books that were banned by a Florida county.