A history subreddit for the American Civil War, which lasted from 1861 to 1865.
Sort by:
Best
Open comment sort options
Best
Top
New
Controversial
Old
Q&A
General James Longstreet by Jeffrey Wert. So poorly written and executed
What didn't you like about it?
The way he constructed his sentences was very confusing. Had to reread paragraphs to fully understand. Very tedious read
That's what it was, I could not finish it and was trying to figure out why.
I’ve never been able to finish a book by Wert. I just find him to a very dense and lifeless writer.
Least favorite? April 1865 by Jay Winik. I say this as someone who has found value in the works of Douglas Southall Freeman, Clifford Dowdy, Shelby Foote, and others who have southern biases as well as non-academics. Winik wrote a cheap piece of Lee worship and it got undue attention because an image of George W. Bush holding it right after 9/11 went viral. The fact it became a New York Times best seller from all the free advertising does not correlate to quality. The central premise of the book can be reduced to Lee deciding not to lead a guerrilla army because he was simply too much of a gentleman to keep fighting vs Grant's having an endless bloodlust being the reason the war ended is pure crap.
Worst is a harder question so I'll skip it. There are some absolute crackpots writing things that wouldn't survive the editors on Wikipedia. But I'll be interested to see what others say.
I liked that one. Not the best book ever, but good pop history for people who know April 1865 solely as "When the war ended." It gave a lot more context to how impactful that month was/is on American history.
I'm also not sure how "Lee made the right decision to give up the fight" is so controversial to you, seems like it was a pretty good idea to me.
I didn't say the problem with the book was the premise of Lee giving up being wrong. My problem is Winik gives Lee far too much credit; he was cut off from moving into North Carolina for uniting with Johnston (in which case he would have continued fighting), multiple federal armies controlled North Carolina and could potentially intercept him, all the tracks south of Lynchburg had been destroyed by Stoneman, federal forces controlled Tennessee + Kentucky, the entire Shenandoah Valley had been turned barren by Custer, etc etc etc. Lee was cornered and although about half of his men didn't take a parole at Appomattox, the army was no longer sustainable as a cohesive force.
That is just the military situation. Lee was a Confederate nationalist working towards building an independent CSA. Pick up Reading the Man by Pryor or Lee's Dispatches to Jefferson Davis edited by Freeman and just read what Lee said if you don't want to take my word on that. A nationalist with no nation has no purpose and that's the situation Les confronted. After Richmond (the seat of government, finance, and industry for the CSA) fell and after he correctly assessed at the final council of war that Grant had him boxed in, he realized there was no chance of dragging out a conventional fight to create that new nation any longer. He knew he was beat and that his larger goal would not be reached.
Instead of acknowledging any of that, Winik goes into myth-making. He uses a lot of favorable adjectives to describe Lee at a personal level and attributes the capitulation as a final act of greatness. He does a bit of Grant-bashing to make the point. It was analysis based on pre-existing admiration and not worth taking seriously.
This thread is exactly what I needed to make space on my bookshelf of unread thrift store finds. I’ve already put three in the donate pile because of this lol.
My least favorite is George Henry Thomas: As True as Steel by Brian Steel Wills. It’s one of the few biographies out there on my favorite Civil War general, but by God is it dry, and I like dry books.
To be fair, it is incredibly detailed and well researched for a guy that burned all of his letters. But Brian Wills is just not a very interesting writer.
In terms of truly horrible books, there are some really bad Lost Cause expanded fanfic out there trying to pass as “history” books. My favorite that I’ve found in the wild being A Politically Incorrect Guide to the Ciivl War by H W Crocker (fitting last name here). The book includes an “afterward by Jefferson Davis”.
If you find Crocker funny, take a look at Stonewall Jackson: The Black Man's Friend .
Donnybrook, the battle of bull run, 1861
Virtually no maps of either the campaign or the battle itself. Really rather amazing when you compare it to any other campaign books of the Civil War. Additionally, once the battle commences, the author has a bad habit of referencing 'a unit', or 'a path', or 'a battery ' but doesn't identify them. Finally and most frustratingly, once the battle moves from Matthews to Henry House Hill, the author seems to relish in the fog of war and basically relays a story of utter confusion over the fighting at this stage of the battle. It's almost like he throws up his hands and asks the reader to decide themselves on what took place. Like, we know what occurred that day between the OR's and official reports but apparently the author didn't feel the need to tell that story. When I finished it, I honestly wonderd what compelled the author to write it in the first place.
Ninety-eight Days: the geographers guide to the battle of Vicksburg
The title gives you an idea of the focus but I took a chance on it because I geek out on stuff like the lay of the land, which so often plays a part in every Civil War battle. This book was on another level though and dove way deeper on not only the geography of the battle area surrounding Vicksburg but also specifics on every battle fought across the entire campaign. Contrasting it to Donnybrook, some of the graphics in the book were almost too dense to appreciate, like the cross sections of every battlefield of the campaign were sometimes too much for me to appreciate. Additionally/amazigly, the author told the story of each battle of the campaign twice. Once from the federal perspective and once from the confederate perspective. Just a very detailed read that I was not expecting with my first book on the Vicksburg campaign.
The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government by Jefferson Davis...
Ok not only is this thing insanely long (two volumes and like 1500 pages or so), but it's the literary birth of the lost cause there. There was so many times reading it I nearly wanted to yell "But you said in 1858 the EXACT OPPOSITE of what you have here now"... So a lot about how good slavery is for black people, how the North loved slavery itself, and how that had nothing to do with secession and the South was clearly just about to give it up anyways. Even if those things conflict with each other... and reality itself.
It's pretty dry, it does focus heavily on the actual war as well. His belief is the story of the Confederacy was just the story of war, but those parts are better told in other memoirs of those who were actually fighting in those battles.
Ill know now that if any of my confederate reenactor friends cite this ill tell them to wipe their ass with it
Back in 2004 I hunkered down during Hurricane Ivan and read this book. Afterwards I wondered if my time would have been better spent outside.
Wow that is brutal, but fitting... I get its historical relevance. But kind of like Mein Kampf, while it's relevant to see the mind of the person who wrote it, it is not something that should be taken factually.
Sadly, like Mein Kampf there are still a few who do try to take it as fact still.
I recently read, ‘Reading the Man: A Portrait of Robert E. Lee Through His Private Letters’ and wasn’t a huge fan. I was underwhelmed by the amount of letters in this book seeing as how that’s its main selling point (a good many letters aren’t even to or from Lee) and I felt like there was a little too much speculation at times in this book. Overall, I didn’t hate this book, but there’s plenty of other books that cover Lee’s life much better and in detail. It also doesn’t help I recently read ‘Embattled Rebel’ & ‘American Ulysses’ which were both very solid biographies compared to this one…
Not a civil war book, but Gone for Soldiers about the Mexican American war by Jeff Shaara is pure drivel. Lee is a bumbling, unconfident young officer (40 years old), Santa Anna is a mustachio-twirling villain, everyone else is incompetent, dialogue is so poor it feels like he hammered it out over a long weekend. I have no idea why it has good review scores.
Jeff Shaara has spent his life cashing in on his father’s (a much better writer) legacy, so I’m not surprised
Vicksberg by Donald L. Miller was my least favorite. Not because it's bad writing or pacing. It's actually very descriptive. But because it wasn't about the just the Vicksburg campaign. It was about all the campaigns leading up to Vicksburg. The book talks about New Orleans, Forts Henry and Donaldson, Shiloh, Corinth, Bayou campaigns, and eventually siege. It covered way more than what I was looking for. I expect a book just on Grants attempts to take Vicksburg. Instead I got a history of almost the entire western theater.
Bruce Catton's 'Grant Moves South' covers almost the same amount of history and is slightly better in my opinion.
You might try "Vicksburg, 1863", by Winston Groom (Yes, that Winston Groom - the author of Forrest Gump!) It's really well done and it's mostly just about the Vicksburg campaign.
In terms of firsthand sources, Alexander Stephens' "A Constitutional View of the Late War Between the States" might be the single most execrably boring and poorly written book I've forced my poor eyes to sift through. The man never says in one sentence what he can say in three paragraphs instead. Even Jefferson Davis' legendarily pedantic "Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government" pales in comparison to Stephens' mess.
On the other hand, "Company Aytch" by Sam Watkins is probably the single best firsthand account of the war from the perspective of a regular footsoldier, if you're looking for a primer on the actual experience of that era of American warfare there's no better resource.