A Short History of the Civil War

I blundered on this book in the stacks at the local library. After an introduction to the civil war via the Shaara novels, my wife and I have been reading some histories of specific battles and some biographies of individual leaders. We felt the need for a general survey of the war to tie it all together, but we did not want to devote the time to a comprehensive history. This book filled the bill perfectly. Stokesbury has an extremely fluid and readable prose style that is simply a joy to read. I assume that his facts are reasonably accurate. To me, he seems to devote just the right amount of attention to the various battles, individuals, issues, etc., though he leaves enough unsaid to stimulate further reading. He certainly does have his opinions, which he expresses sometimes with a delightful sarcasm. And he imparts some of the flavor of what it must have felt like to fight or have a loved one fighting in this war, which literally tore America apart in more ways than one. Tears came to my eyes as I read the details of the surrender at Appomattox, a testament both to the extreme emotions of the war, even after more than a century, and to Stokesbury's narrative powers. The only real weak point of the book for me was the maps, which are not cited in the text and do little to assist the reader in visualizing troop deployments, battle maneuvers, etc.

This is a nice introduction to Civil War history. The author does not take sides which is refreshing since a bias is often evident in Civil war books. Between narratives of movements and battles are several short essays about the cause of the war, the economies of the respective nations, and analysis of military doctrine of the period.The author does a bit of analysis of the key characters and its interesting to see a foreigner's take on the war (Stokesbury is Canadian). One criticism is that the battle descriptions are so short that it is easy to get confused about what took place in the action, and whole complex campaigns can be glossed over. To be fair, this is difficult to avoid in a "short" history of such a protracted war.The writing is good and some of it stands out (the last paragraph of the book gave me goosebumps). This is a good primer on the Civil war and is recommended.

I bought this book for a nice summary, but not too detailed summary of the Civil War....and thats exactly what I got. Professor Stokesbury writes this wonderful, well researched book on one the most key points in our history. After reading this book I have a new outlook on how close we were to becoming two nations. Each key battle is cleary and methodically discussed, along with some of the stuff outside the battlelines. He is very objective, not favoring either side, and explains the causes of the start and the final collapse of the Confederacy. I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants a quick, easy-read summary of the Civil War, or to a history buff.