The Longest Night: A Military History of the Civil War

This is a long and detailed military history of the Civil War. The book is not designed for an overview and if that is what you want save your money. However, if you want to know about more than Shiloh, Antietam, Vicksburg & Gettysburg this is the book. It might be the only book that will tell you how Pea Ridge impacted Shiloh and place the battle of Perryville in the invasion of 1862. Bias, no I didn't find a problem with the book. It is devoid of the "Lost Cause" Mythology so loved by many and balanced in presenting the people. This often leads to charges like that. Is it a big book? YES, you need pages to lightly cover an event as big as the American Civil War.

I'd never heard of David J. Eicher when I picked up this book. He has written about the Civil War before, notably doing a book-length bibliography (The Civil War in Books) and a book on Civil War battlefields, but his only narrative work of book length prior to the present work is a picture book on Robert E. Lee. Apparently, he's rather young and this is a first effort; who knows what he'll come up with next.The Longest Night is one of the best books I've ever read on the Civil War, and I have read a considerable amount of stuff. Eicher spends little time on the politics of the war, instead devoting most of his attention to the seemingly endless series of battles and campaigns that were once called the "American Iliad." He exhibits an awe-inspiring command of sources and narrative, and must have an encyclopedic knowledge of Civil War combat. In addition to every major battle, more minor fights and even skirmishes are mentioned at least if not covered thoroughly. The maps seem to represent the battles they cover well, though occasionally they fall short of complete. I suppose that's inevitable given the size of the book.I suppose I should comment on the bias allegations and the one fellow complaining about General Blunt being on the train. The bias involved here isn't pro-Northern, it's insufficiently pro-Southern. On two of the more controversial issues of Civil War history, the Dahlgren affair and the Fort Pillow Massacre, the author essentially stays out of the controversy, presenting the evidence briefly, and then leaving it up to the reader to decide. With the Lincoln assassination, he acknowledges the work done by William A. Tidwell, connecting the Davis administration with the plot, then baldly asserts that there's no proof the Confederates were directly involved in the assassination. In all three of these instances, a true pro-Northern author would be much more positive in his assertions; Eicher's just telling you what happened. And the reference to Blunt's wagon train even specifies how many teams of horses and mules were captured. No mention of locomotives is made.I did have a few quibbles with the book, largely with the way the information is presented, though none of this is enough to lower my rating from 5 stars. For one thing, throughout the book there are passages describing various topical aspects of the Civil War: medical procedures and casualties, what the troops were armed with, how prisoners were dealt with, etc. For my money Eicher would have done better to put these in a separate chapter at the beginning of the book, or in an appendix. The chapters carry titles, but they only describe one event that occurs in each, and each is stuffed full of events. I would have liked to see the old style chapter sub-headings, or perhaps page headers describing what's going on on that page, along with the date of the events. When he listed ships, he seemed to be unaware he didn't need to put USS or CSS before every ship's individual name.Giv

Although I have read many books on the Civil War, this book is perhaps the best single volume (actually big enough for two) book on the Civil War. This book will appeal to someone who has not had the opportunity to appreciate the complex nature of the war that spread completely across the country from not only Virginia in the East but to Fort Craig, New Mexico in the far west, from Robert E. Lee to Kit Carson. While their may not be new ground for the seasoned CW veteran reader, there is no doubt that this book will appeal to an aspiring CW historian that wants the total picture of what occurred during the war. Eicher provides detail on virtually every major battle down to substantial skirmishes including the identification of every major general down to the division level with short biographical sketches on the main participants. The detail is somewhat overwhelming but for seasoned CW readers, there is some useful material as one can actually follow the names of generals that disappeared or were banished from the eastern theater such as Magruder, Slocum, Hooker, Rosecrans, Butler, Pleasonton, Loring, Colquitt, D. H. Hill, Holmes etc. In addition, Eicher clarifies the true rank status of generals, provides historical updates such as the recent discovery of the Hundley and maintains an objective point of view particularly on Grant, Sherman, Longstreet, Forrest and many others. Although descriptions of the major battles are somewhat difficult due to the compressed nature of this single volume, as all CW books would benefit from maps galore to understand troop movements, the best part of this big book are the descriptions of raids, small battles such as Ball's Bluff and interesting actions such as the daring sinking of the ironclad ram the Albemarle by Lt. Cushing with his nighttime mission involving a small sleek boat with a torpedo as a spar. Even includes detail on the Vermont bank raids by Confederates, the attempts to burn NYC and Confederate attempts to spread yellow fever. There may be some small mistakes such as the author sites Booth's death near Port Tobacco which I think he meant Port Royal (or maybe that was the original name) and there may be others, I wasn't aware that Picket had 19,000 men at Five Forks (with a number that large it seems that A. P. Hill should have commanded it). This is a huge book that takes some patience to read and it sometimes is tedious in detail but even for a veteran CW buff it can be rewarding. For the CW veteran it may be like a referee rereading the rules to see if you really do know it all.

"From April 12, 1861, to June 2, 1865, the light of the great experiment of democracy burned but dimily as more than 8,700 battles and skirmishes swept across the land and extinguished more than 620,000 lives North and South. For all Americans, it was the longest night."--from the frontispiece.By one estimate, the Civil War literature has swelled to more than 70,000 books, including multi-volume editions by Bruce Catton, Douglas Southall Freeman, Shelby Foote, and others. The best one-volume general work on the Civil War (which discusses political, economic, and social issues as well as military matters) is BATTLE CRY OF FREEDOM, the Pulitzer Prize-winning work by James M. McPherson (Oxford Univ. Press, 1988). Until now, however, there has been no standard one-volume military history of the Civil War. In THE LONGEST NIGHT, David J. Eicher has filled this gap by providing a comprehensive narrative of some 450 military engagements--major battles and minor skirmishes (although, for those who were killed, the skirmishes were not minor). From the first shots fired at Fort Sumter (South Carolina), to Lee's surrender to Grant at Appomattox Court House (Virginia), Eicher covers the "big battles": the bloodbath at Shiloh (Pittsburgh Landing, Tennessee); Antietam, the war's bloodiest day (Sharpsburg, Maryland); the Union debacle at Fredericksburg (Virginia); the stalemate at Stones River (Murfreesboro, Tennessee); Lee's master stroke at Chancellorsville (Virginia); the three-day battle at Gettysburg (Pennsylvania); the seige and fall of Vicksburg (Mississippi); the stunning Confederate victory at Chickamauga, "the river of death" (Georgia), the battles for Chattanooga; Grant's campaign into the Wilderness and his worst blunder, at Cold Harbor (Virginia); Sherman's capture of Atlanta and March to the Sea; the siege of Petersburg (Virginia), and the collapse of Lee's army.In addition to his coverage of the large battles, Eicher devotes much attention to the Western Theater, the Trans-Mississippi, the many naval actions along coastlines and on rivers, and many other aspects that earlier one-volume histories have brushed over lightly. "I have supplemented this military history," Eicher writes, "with the words of the participants themselves, and I have based the narrative on numerous manuscript collections and recently published battle histories, diaries, letter collections, and biographies. . . . The result is a popular military history that can be thought of as a companion to McPherson's distinguished work." It took me a month to finish this 990-page tome, but it was time well spent. Eicher paints his impressive military mural on a large canvas, revealing fascinating details often ignored by other literary artists. As the panorama spreads out before us, we are appalled at the slaughter--a total of at least 621,538 dead, North and South--a number approximately equal to the American deaths in all other wars combined. THE LONGEST NIGHT deserves a place on your b

This is a groundbreaking work that brings to life the human story of the battles, the suffering and tactics and strategy, better than any other book I've read. The maps are wonderful and the number of excerpts from letters and reports make the book a fast read even though there's lots of detail. I recommend it HIGHLY, as it already has a special place on my Civil War shelf. Hats off to the author!