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The American Civil War: A Military History (2009)

by John Keegan(Favorite Author)

3.65 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

0307263436 (ISBN13: 9780307263438)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

Knopf

review 1: Keegan returns again with a single volume military history of an epic war. While not his strongest work (the factual errors are highlighted in various other outlets), the book is generally strong and highlights Keegan's penchant for finding geography to be the primary determinant in most warfare. Beyond that general focus, it's a straightforward, and fairly brief, history of the war. One fact that surprised me, even as a moderately knowledgeable Civil War reader was Keegan's claim that there were approximately 10,000 battles of various sizes during the war (an average of 7 for every day of the war). I had never heard of nor conceived of the war in such terms and it was a genuinely interesting little nugget of info. Unfortunately, given Keegan's other factual errors in... more the book, I don't know if it's true.
review 2: The book I read to research this post was The American Civil War by John Keegan which is an excellent book which I bought from kindle. This book must be one of the if not the definitive books on the American Civil War and I can't praise it enough. It reads almost like a thriller and goes into almost every aspect of the war in great detail. Over a million people died in this war so in terms of casualties it is one of the worst wars ever on a par with the 2 world wars. The Union & the Confederacy where quite mismatched with the northern states having the lion's share of resources and population. America was only starting to become industrialized but most of this had been in the north. In the south wealth was regarded as being measured by how many slaves and an able bodied male slave would sell for around a thousand dollars. The vast majority of people didn't have many slaves and if they had plantations they tended to be quite small. Only the very elite had the kind of wealth portrayed in the film Gone With The Wind. One of the big factors in the war was the Confederacy taking a huge portion of land from Mexico which was actually a bigger country both in area and population wise but lost the war they fought. Another factor was their was a slave taken to one of the northern states where slavery was abolished and he went to court to try and get his freedom because he was still a slave. The court which was in the south tried to change the law to get the verdict they wanted which resulted in quite a backlash from the Union. Of course the last straw was the Confederacy proclaiming independence. This book which is a pretty big book depicts the war battle by battle. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it and it is a great book. John Keegan has written quite a lot of history books and I have read several and reviewed them. His books always seem to be really good. less

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