January HistoryCAT: North & South American Wars and Conflicts

This month we'll read about Wars and Conflicts of the Americas. Anywhere from the tip of South America to the Artic Circle. You could read about the Spanish conquest, the American Revolution, the Civil War or battles between the Europeans and the Native Americans for example.

I'm planning on reading something by G. A. Henty, probably both With Lee in Virginia and With Wolfe in Canada.

Don't forget the Wiki: https://wiki.librarything.com/index.php/2024_HistoryCAT

>1 SilverWolf28: I'm leaning towards Robert Graves's Sergeant Lamb's America, about the American Revolution.

>2 NinieB: That sounds interesting.

I've got a non-fiction about Andersonville that has been on my shelf for sometime. I will begin with that one and if time, I also have a newer acquisition, Northern Armageddon: The Battle of the Plains of Abraham and the Making of the American Revolution by D. Peter MacLeod which will also fit.

I am thinking of The Falcon by John Tanner, the memoir of a homesteaders' child who was captured and reared as an Ojibwe and grew up to act as an intermediary between Ojibwe and US society.

I thought that I didn't have anything on my shelf and had planned to skip this month, but I discovered that the male protagonist of Vivid by Beverly Jenkins suffers from PTSD since he fought in the Civil War, and that the topic and his trauma are a part of the story, so I might read that one.

I'm planning to read Panther in the sky by James Alexander Thom. It's about Tecumseh, a Shawnie warrior chief, who struggled to save his land from the European settlers.

I am planning to read The March by E. L. Doctorow which is about Sherman's march with his troops from Atlanta to the sea and up into the Carolinas.

I'd like to read North and South by John Jakes, but it's long. So, I may or may not do that one.

>7 h-mb: oh, that's a good author!

>10 fuzzi: Good to know. This is the first book of him I'll read.

>11 h-mb: I read Follow the River, which I could not put down...I gave it a full 5 stars.

I have The Civil War Diary of Anne S. Frobel of Wilton Hill in Virginia on my physical shelf, so I'll be reading that one. I bought it at our local library book sale a few years back and have been meaning to get to it. There's a price sticker on the back that shows it was purchased at the Mount Vernon gift shop. I thought that was pretty neat.

I read The Thin Light of Freedom, which looks at the Civil War and Reconstruction largely through the lens of two communities that were quite close together geographically but on opposite sides of the war: Staunton, VA and Chambersburg, PA.

I completed Life and Death in Rebel Prisons: Giving a Complete History of the Inhuman and Barbarous Treatment of Our Brave Soldiers by Rebel Authorities, ... Ga., and Florence, S. C (Civil War) by Robert Kellogg. A non-fiction read about incarceration in Andersonville Prison.

I think I found my read, The River Between Us by Richard Peck.

I read A Girl Called Samson, historical fiction based on a true story of a girl who disguised herself as a boy to enlist in the American Revolutionary War.

The Civil War of Amos Abernathy, Michael Leali, middle-school fiction in which a 12-year-old who volunteers at the Living History Park explores the history of LGBT+ people during the Civil War era.

>8 staci426: I read that a few years ago and it was very, very well done. As one would expect from Doctorow.

>19 threadnsong: That's good to hear. I've only read one other Doctorow so far, Homer & Langley, which I really enjoyed, but is of a very different subject matter.

I read Panther in the sky by J.A. Thom about the war of the Shawnee nation against the White people who wanted their lands. This took place at the end of the 18th century and beginning of the 19th century (Tecumseh, the panther in the sky, died in 1813). The Indians are depicted a bit too much idealistically for my taste but the book is well written.

Unfortunately, The March ended up as a DNF at about the 40% point. I did not care for the audio narrator, especially his Southern female voices, and there were so many different points of view that it was getting confusing trying to keep everyone straight especially with jumping between them all so quickly.
Not sure if I will find something else for this month instead.

I have finished Flashman and the Redskins where the eponymous hero ends up with a ringside seat for Custer's Last Stand.

I have finished reading Storm Over the Land by Carl Sandburg, which encompasses the entire American Civil War. Excellent.

I read 1812: War with America, which also fits this month's PrizeCAT. It's a history of the war written from a British perspective, and at the time it was published it claimed to be the first complete history from that perspective.

>22 staci426: Oh no! Well, there are a lot of POV in that book, that's for sure.

I started a tome from my shelves that I thought I might finish for this challenge. It's called Last Train from Atlanta and was written in 1958. It's quite comprehensive, using letters, diary entries, and newspaper articles to describe the Battle of Atlanta in day-by-day accounts.

Unfortunately, it's already the 25th and I'm at p. 186 of nearly 500 pp. so I don't think I'll finish it this month.

Fortunately, it is engaging (though grim) and presents so much real-time historical context that I finally started it and intend to finish it sometime in the next few months.

I read Fanning's Narrative, an account written by Nathaniel Fanning, who was a privateer and (briefly) a naval officer during the US Revolutionary War. It was interesting.

I am still hoping to get to this one, but it's long. I do think I can start before the end of the month, so hopefully it won't take me too far into Feb to finish!
North and South / John Jakes

I just finished American Revolutions by Alan Taylor, which is a compelling big-picture look at the American Revolution and the years immediately preceding and following it within the context of colonialism, great power politics, etc.

I just finished On a night of a Thousand Stars which is based around Agentina's Dirty War in the 1970s. Took a while to get into but not too bad.

I found Wedded to War by Jocelyn Green on my Kindle. Christian historical fiction based on the life of a pioneer Civil War nurse Georgeanna Woolsey. It was very good with a powerful subplot that focused on challenges faced by poor women.

I just finished Island on Fire, about the Jamaican slave revolts that helped sway public opinion in the British ruling class and ultimately was the final nail in the coffin for slavery in the British empire

>12 fuzzi: I have a copy of that on the shelf and will move it closer to the top of the list. She was from Virginia and there is a statue of her in SWVA but I have yet to visit it for some reason. Maybe I will take a long weekend, visit the statue and read the book!

>34 witchyrichy: ooh, a statue in SWVA? I'll have to look that up, maybe we can add a stop to one of our trips.

You can read my review, no spoilers:

This is an extremely engrossing story, based upon the written experiences of 18th century pioneers in what is now West Virginia. Mary Ingles and most of her family are taken captive during a Shawnee raid. What she endures, and how she manages to survive is fascinating, especially when you realize that this is not Hollywood, but the 'real deal'.

The author has done a superb job of fleshing out the characters and information to relate the story of Mary Ingles' 6 week walk through the wilderness in an attempt to reunite with her husband and brother.

I had a hard time putting down this book, even to sleep!

I'm still working on this challenge, and it'll probably take me some time longer to finish the book. I'm reading it in French, so it's slow going for me. It's Mary l'Irlandaise by Maryse Rouy, about a teenager who is sent from her impoverished family in Ireland to live with a relation in Canada. Part of the book is set during the Lower Canada Rebellion in 1837.

Finally finished my 800+ page January read!

North and South / John Jakes
4 stars

This is set in the decades leading up to the American Civil War. It focuses on two families: the Hazards, living in Pittsburgh, and the Mains, who own a plantation (and slaves) in South Carolina. George Hazard and Orry Main become best friends when at military school in the early 1840s(?). They fight together in the Mexican War, then retire from the military. George does marry, but Orry falls for a woman who is marrying a brutal slave owner.

Years later, George’s youngest brother, Billy, and Orry’s young cousin, Charles, head to the same military school together (though they have known each other through the families’ friendship for a while now)… but now the school is much more divisive along North/South lines with slavery/politics being the issue.

Orry’s brother, Cooper, is very much against owning slaves and he marries a woman from the North. George’s sister, Virgilia, is a staunch abolitionist and gets in Orry’s face whenever the Mains visit. Billy has fallen in love with Orry’s youngest sister, Brett, though he had a brief flirtation with a sister, Ashton, just slightly older. Brett really is the marrying type vs Ashton’s flirtatious ways.

There is a lot going on in this long book and a lot of North/South mixing between the families and their friends/acquaintances. It’s not often I rate a book this long (over 800 pages) this high, but I really liked this one all the way though (though it was a bit tricky at the start to get a handle on who was who!). There is even more going on (and more characters) than I’ve detailed in my summary. This is the first in a trilogy. I assume the others are also very long, so it might be a while before I get to the next, but I will definitely read it at some point. I’ve never seen the miniseries, but would like to; I hadn’t realized Patrick Swayze is in it!