![]() The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance.įor Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions. He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. This new volume in the Oxford History of the United States series should become a standard general history of the Civil War period-it's one that will stand up for years to come.Įlie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children. McPherson also works in many bits of trivia that, while they may not be of historical import, make his treatment nearly effortless reading. ![]() ![]() Grant's drinking problem and how he struggled to control it is shown to have shaped the general's personality in many positive ways etc. Social history and verified gossip abound and are used to good effect: the 1851 racing victory of the US yacht America over 14 British vessels in the Royal Yacht Squadron became the talk of the sporting world and, also, heralded this nation's emergence as an industrial and technological force talk of U.S. What distinguishes McPherson's work is his fluid writing style and his able use of anecdote and human interest to flesh out his portrait of the times. The author also addresses arguments about the root origins or that war and pinpoints major causes: hatred of slavery and blind regional prejudice. And McPherson's coverage of the Civil War is just as strong and clear. McPherson delineates the issues that galvanized and divided the American public from the end of the Mexican War in 1848 to the opening of the Civil War in 1861, providing thorough explanations of the pre-war period's gravest crises-the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act and the prairie guerrilla war it started the national clamor over the Dred Scott case anti-Catholic and anti-immigrant violence and the brief life of the nativist Know-Nothing Party and the panic over John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry in 1859. From there, the narrative speeds through 28 chapters that draw a precise and lively picture of what America and Americans were like in mid-19th century. The volume begins with a deft description of the ragged American army trudging into Mexico City in 1847. So though nobody is entirely objective, I think McPherson is the most reliable, knowledgeable, yet objective writer I’ve found yet.With this major work, McPherson (History/Princeton Ordeal by Fire) cements his reputation as one of the finest Civil War historians. And indeed, anyone who writes history is subjective, even if it is only by the facts they include (and which are emphasized) what sections or titles are named and which generals are given the most air time. Feelings are sometimes still surprisingly heated. ![]() One other thing: I find that in discussions about the Civil War (still referred to in much of the South as “the war between the states”), though it is long past, in some ways it isn’t over. It requires a high level of literacy, but with that caveat, it is a surprisingly accessible narrative, from a man who documents everything and knows what he’s talking about. This is unquestionably the most thorough and accurate volume about America’s last righteous war. It also makes it much more interesting to see whose fortunes rise, and whose fall (although these are, naturally, secondary to the issue of the war itself). ![]() It begins with the Mexican-American War because that is where much of the Civil War’s military leadership is forged. It won the Pulitzer, and although it is a large, serious piece of work, it is immensely readable. If you only choose to read one (challenging and sizable) resource on the American Civil War, this is the one. ![]()
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