Sherman: A Soldiers Life

I'm giving this title a five-star rating thanks to Kennett's insight into Sherman's mind. I was more than familiar with Sherman's life before opening this book, but I still managed to find it an entertaining read. Sherman was a complex man with a variety of motivations in his life and career, and Kennett does a strong job of focusing on WHY he did what he did rather than just regurgitating the events in his life. While the focus if the book is on the military career of Sherman, there is enough information on his early life and his time between military stints to provide a well-rounded biography.

When I first got this book and started reading it I made the mistake of thinking this as a plain old Biography. As I read it I learned that wasn't the case and the second half of the title "A Soldier's Life" made a whole lot more sense. This is a Military Biography on Sherman, not a life Biography. This book was my first step into the world of reading about America's Civil War. Ever since I was a kid I have been fascinated by it and after reading this my old fascination was ignited ten fold. I would call this a must for anyone interested in Sherman.

If you want a good solid exciting biography of Sherman - this is your book. I'm tired of reading bloated biographies of say 1000 pages. This book has a nice quick pace. Sherman would have liked that. It gives adequate coverage to Sherman's military and personal life as well as a nice perspective on his historical legacy.

I found the book to be a great read. The author gives just enough background and insight into the Civil War without going overboard. I was looking for a biography on William Tecumseh Sherman, the man, not a book about Sherman and the Civil War. This book fit like glove. The author does a great job of bringing Sherman to life in all aspects of his life: family problems, his military ambition and his foray's into the private sector. Though Sherman is probably most remembered for his 'March to the Sea', the author gives it appropriate attention, but there was certainly more to Sherman than that military campaign. Excellent book on Sherman. RECOMMENDED.

In his memoirs, General Norman Schwarzkopf revealed that when he was directing the Gulf War he kept before him on his desk a quotation from William Tecumseh Sherman: "War is the remedy our enemies have chosen. And I say let us give them all they want."In SHERMAN: A SOLDIER'S LIFE, Lee Kennett, Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Georgia, paints a sympathetic but not uncritical portrait of William Tecumseh Sherman (1820-1891), the Civil War general who "made Georgia howl" and whose army destroyed Columbia, SC.Sherman once said, "I must be judged as a soldier." Taking the man at his word, Kennett focuses on Sherman's military career. "Necessarily," he writes, "other aspects of the general's life can receive only limited coverage. . . . His military career was central to his being; his marriage, his domestic and social life--all else, in fact--had to be fitted in where the army left room."Kennett's narrative follows Sherman from his birth in Lancaster (Fairfield County) Ohio, through his years at West Point, and his travels to Florida, South Carolina, California, Louisiana, Missouri, Washington, D.C., and New York.We see Sherman at the debacle of the First Battle of Bull Run (Manassas, Va.); at the near-disaster at Shiloh (in southern Tenn.), where Grant and Sherman allegedly were surprised by a Confederate attack. We see Sherman's mistakes at the seige and capture of Vicksburg, Miss., and his tardy advance at the Battle of Chattanooga.The zenith of Sherman's career (the Confederates called it his nadir) was the Georgia campaign, in which Sherman commanded the advance from Chattanooga to Atlanta, the capture of Atlanta, and the "Great March" from Atlanta to the Atlantic, linking up with the Union navy at Savannah, Ga. Taking a page from the book of Ulysses S. Grant, who severed his logistical lifeline and lived off the land during the seige and capture of Vicksburg, Sherman did the same during his famous (or infamous, depending on which side of the Mason-Dixon Line one lived) march, cutting a fifty-mile-wide swath of destruction from Atlanta to the sea.Sherman impressed one of his contemporaries as "a man of power more than any man I remember. Not general intellectual power, not Websterian, but the power which a flash of lightning suggests--as clear, as intense, and as rapid."In spite of the author's statement, SHERMAN: A SOLDIER'S LIFE is much more than a military chronicle. Kennett traces Sherman's life both before and after the Civil War. And he includes a fascinating psychological profile, commenting on whether Sherman was a manic-depressive (Sherman certainly experienced extreme "highs" and "lows"). "In Sherman's case," writes Kennett, "there is another--and more likely--diagnosis: narcissistic personality disorder." As a narcissist, Sherman was driven by an inner need for acceptance, respect, and praise; conversely, he was terrified by the prospect of failure and ridicule, and waged a long-standing war of words with the Four