Gabor S. Boritt (1940–2026)

This is a fascinating book that, I fear, suffers from a lack of coherence. It is widely agreed that Jefferson Davis did not do a particularly good job in managing the senior officers in Confederate service: he kept Braxton Bragg in place too long; he quarreled fatally with Joseph E. Johnston, he appointed John Bell Hood -- or the three-quarters or so that were left of him after Yankee bullets and Confederate surgeons had done their work on him -- to be a full general when he had yet to prove show more himself even as a corps commander. There is great scope for examination of these tricky issues.

Yet I ended up wondering who was the target audience for the result. Specialists? It's frankly not detailed enough -- and, indeed, many of the authors, such as Steven E. Woodworth, have made their argument in greater detail elsewhere. Non-experts? I fear they will find this book frequently puzzling. There are two reasons for this. First off is a lack of context: The individual essays in here generally don't give readers enough information to know what is going on. Take Herman Hattaway's essay on John Bell Hood. Davis appointed Hood in 1864 to command the Army of Tennessee -- the army that was charged with guarding Georgia and, in particular, Atlanta. Hood aggressively attacked William Tecumseh Sherman's armies, was heavily defeated, and had to evacuate Atlanta. In other words, he was a complete failure, who would go on to even greater failures at the Battles of Franklin and Nashville. Yet Hattaway talks so much about the progress of the Davis/Hood relationship that he never even really tells us at what point in the process Atlanta fell -- a key moment in the whole story!

Or take the matter of Joseph E. Johnston. The book has no index, so I can't tell how many times he is mentioned, but I feel as if he is more often referred to than any other general, including even Robert E. Lee. After all, he was sent all over the Confederacy, to all sorts of jobs, making Davis more and more upset with him each time. There is one chapter specifically about Johnston, but since Johnston was either the predecessor or the successor of every other general covered in the book, he is a very common thread. And the essayists can't agree on how good a general he was. That is fair, since historians in general can't agree. But it creates a great deal of incoherence; the essayists really need to define their positions on Johnston and explain them.

On a more trivial note, Harold Holzer wrote an essay, probably the most unusual item in the book, on the Confederate printing industry and how it presented Davis and his generals in illustrated prints. This essay refers to a lot of images, many but not all of which are included in the illustrations of the book -- but there are no references in the essays to tell which illustrations are meant!

Finally, I think there is a big hole here. There were eight men who became full Generals in the Confederate army: Samuel Cooper, Albert Sydney Johnston, Robert E. Lee, Joseph E. Johnston, P. G. T. Beauregard, Braxton Bragg, Edmund Kirby Smith, and John Bell Hood. Three are omitted from this book (Cooper, because he was mostly a paper-pusher in Richmond; A. S. Johnston, because he was killed in 1862 and never became a real problem for Davis; and Smith, because he was sent off to Texas and was largely out of communication with the rest of the Confederacy). But why those eight men? Given that Bragg should have been fired earlier, that Hood was a disaster, that Davis didn't like J. E. Johnston, why not more of a look at the next tier of officers, the Lieutenant Generals. Why was Hood chosen to be a full general rather than the far more qualified (and more competent) William J. Hardee? Why, if everyone thinks Leonidas Polk was such a bad officer, are his limited skills not described? Why was John C. Pemberton allowed to lose Vicksburg? Why was Hood promoted above his former corps commander James Longstreet? All these are a vital part of Davis's relations with his generals, and they aren't covered.

All these complaints don't make this a bad book; it is a genuinely interesting topic. But I feel as if a good editor could have worked with the essayists to make something far better. Or, perhaps, someone else should take the idea and truly do it right. show less

I like to read books before the movie, so I read this to prepare for "Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter" and get the correct role people like Will Johnson and Joshua Speed had to in Lincoln's life.

:)

Seriously, this is a great book about the cemetary consecration speech how it came to be (not on the back of envelope enroute in the train), what else went on that day, the battle and its repercurrsions (this also extensively covered in appendixes) and why the Emancipation Proclamation, as dry as show more it is, subsumed this concise bit of eloquence before buyer's remorse over racal integration caused the mythologizing populace to choose to see Lincol as wordsmith and not chain-breaker. show less

This book is a collection of five essays by James McPherson, Archer Jones, Gary W. Gallagher, Reid Mitchell, and Joseph T. Glatthaar, detailing why the Confederate States of America lost the Civil War.

This book did a lot to make me re-evaluate my opinions on whether or not the South would have won if they'd had the same resources as the North. According to the essays, the Confederate states lost the war because the Union had key victories, dedicated troops, African Americans, military show more planning/political necessity, and better generals. And considering my inherent stubbornness, any book that makes me rethink my opinions on anything is worth note. All five writers present their point well, and they all back them up with solid facts. My one quibble has to do with the fact that the overall point of each essay seems to overlap with the others, and by the fifth essay, Glatthaar's "Black Glory," it was all redundant.

I would recommend this book to those who are interested in learning a little more about some of the specifics of the Civil War and its outcome. show less

This is a '100 essential Lincoln book', but I wouldn't rank it that high. The essays (many/most are condensed from books by their respective authors) are typically very scholarly, but often very dry. Of interest is the range of works, from whether Lincoln was really a friend of the slaves or not, to psychoanalytic views of Lincoln. The latter delves into total absurdity, such as whether the famous dream that Lincoln had of the 'dead president' days before his assassination was really show more Lincoln's unconscious fear that he had 'killed Washington' (Washington's view of the Republic, that is.) Yeah, right. There are a number of commentaries on the essays, which provide a nice reality check. Overall, this was really a bit too dry for my taste. Guess I'm just a plebe. show less