Curiosities of the Civil War: Strange Stories, Infamous Characters, and Bizarre Events by Webb Garrison
Too scattered for this student of the Civil War. Webb Garrison's Curiosities of the Civil War: Strange Stories, Infamous Characters, and Bizarre Events is a well-researched , hefty book that does deliver what it promises - a collection of odd things about the Civil War. I read a lot of history and it seems to me that there are two main ways to organize a book about history. You can go with the more traditional timeline approach - tell the story in the order that it happened (narrative history). Or, you can go with themes - study the themes of the history as the writer sees them. For example, a Civil War historian can look into the evolution of military technology and techniques or focus on civil rights in the North and the South. Most historians try for a combination of the two and pick several themes and follow them as they tell a narrative history. John Wilkes Booth (1838-1865) Curiosities of the Civil War goes with the less popular "bathroom reader"