The American Civil War: A Military History by John Keegan (PDF)

Description

For the past half century, John Keegan, the greatest military historian of our time, has been returning to the scenes of America’s most bloody and wrenching war to ponder its lingering conundrums: the continuation of fighting for four years between such vastly mismatched sides; the dogged persistence of ill-trained, ill-equipped, and often malnourished combatants; the effective absence of decisive battles among some two to three hundred known to us by name. Now Keegan examines these and other puzzles with a peerless understanding of warfare, uncovering dimensions of the conflict that have eluded earlier historiography.While offering original and perceptive insights into psychology, ideology, demographics, and economics, Keegan reveals the war’s hidden shape—a consequence of leadership, the evolution of strategic logic, and, above all, geography, the Rosetta Stone of his legendary decipherments of all great battles. The American topography, Keegan argues, presented a battle space of complexity and challenges virtually unmatched before or since. Out of a succession of mythic but chaotic engagements, he weaves an irresistible narrative illuminated with comparisons to the Napoleonic Wars, the First World War, and other conflicts. The American Civil War is sure to be hailed as a definitive account of its eternally fascinating subject.

User’s Reviews

Editorial Reviews: From Publishers Weekly American scholars tend to write the Civil War as a great national epic, but Keegan (The First World War), an Englishman with a matchless knowledge of comparative military history, approaches it as a choice specimen with fascinating oddities. His more thematic treatment has its shortcomings—his campaign and battle narratives can be cursory and ill-paced—but it pays off in far-ranging discussions of broader features: the North’s strategic challenge in trying to subdue a vast Confederacy ringed by formidable natural obstacles and lacking in significant military targets; the importance of generalship; the unusual frequency of bloody yet indecisive battles; and the fierceness with which soldiers fought their countrymen for largely ideological motives. Keegan soars above the conflict to delineate its contours, occasionally swooping low to expand on a telling detail or a moment of valor or pathos. Some of his thoughts, as on the unique femininity of Southern women and how the Civil War stymied socialism in America, are less than cogent. Still, Keegan’s elegant prose and breadth of learning make this a stimulating, if idiosyncratic, interpretation of the war. 16 pages of photos, 12 maps. (Oct. 21) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From Bookmarks Magazine In his broad, single-volume history, Keegan offers an outsider’s view of the American Civil War, providing fresh insights from a bracingly impartial perspective. However, though critics were quick to voice their admiration for Keegan’s previous works, they were deeply disappointed by The American Civil War. His narrative is lamentably riddled with inaccuracies, including the dates, locations, and events of major battles. He incorrectly attributes well-known quotes, presents disproved myths as facts, and repeatedly contradicts himself. Critics also bemoaned the brevity of the book, which muddled the repetitive descriptions of battles and troop movements, and Keegan’s obscure asides. “He’s loath to leave any of his erudition off the table,” opines the New York Times. Critics expected more from this eminent historian, and readers may be similarly disappointed. Review Acclaim for John Keegan’s THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR“Keegan excels at explaining the events and circumstances leading up to the Civil War, and explores how it might not have happened. He depicts with great clarity the haphazard nature in which both governments and armies entered the war. Keegan describes President Abraham Lincoln’s frustrations with his generals with such realism that you almost have a sense of being there with Lincoln….an intimate description of Robert E. Lee’s surrender [is] one of the best I have read. Here, Keegan shows his talents as a historian as he states that Americans recognize the Civil War as ‘the struggle which completed the Revolution and made possible the realism of the ideals on which the Founding Fathers launched the Republic in the 1770s.’ Amen….This British historian has thereby nailed the American psyche’s captivation with its Civil War.” James T. Course, Times Higher Education “Written in crisp prose [with] a confident, distinctive voice…insightful [and] amusing….On matters of grand strategy Keegan is at his best. He comprehends the Civil War as a whole, as a war won or lost in the vast western theater, and one in which the winners were those few generals, along with Abraham Lincoln, who developed a ‘geostrategic appreciation,’ a national rather than local understanding, of the conflict….Keegan’s own geographic range inspires comparative insights that will prod….Keegan’s exploration of how and why the war was fought the way it was fought leaves us much to ponder.” David W. Blight, Slate “an impressive body of ideas for specialists and general readers alike to ponder.” Dennis Showalter, American History Magazine “Even buffs steeped in the subject will find value in Keegan’s observations and conclusions, especially about the nature of battle….The one-volume approach is refreshing and, these days, unusual.” Joe Mysak, Bloomberg News “an intelligent survey of the conflict….Keegan offers many trenchant asides….is shrewd about Ulysses Grant’s ability to leverage ‘evolving technologies’ [and] draws an interesting parallel between the approaches of Stonewall Jackson and the German World War II leader, Erwin Rommel….Keegan is fresh, stimulating and even provocative.” Alan Cate, Cleveland Plain Dealer“[A]ssiduously researched and comprehensive…Keegan gives us a vivid, panoramic overview of dynamic, mid-19th century America…. Besides providing an insightful description of the more urban, industrial North and the slaveholding, agricultural South, Keegan takes us on an authoritative grand tour of Civil War battles…. He has walked these killing grounds [which] he clearly and knowingly describes…. Keegan pays close attention to the geography and logistics of battles and how they related to grand military strategy….Aside from the cinematic battle descriptions, Keegan delves deeply into the psychological makeup of the leading generals…. he is able to examine American history more objectively and with insights that might elude an American historian.…Written for the general reader, The American Civil War is a wonderfully concise, comprehensive and insightful work. It is also heartfelt history.” Chris Patsilelis, Philadelphia Inquirer “Keegan takes the long view of [the Civil War], putting it into broad historical context amid history’s great conflicts, from the Napoleonic wars and World War I to Vietnam.” Dwight Garner, New York Times “[Keegan] applies his outstanding grasp on the nature of human conflict to offer a fresh evaluation of the American Civil War….Among the numerous areas he explores are psychology, ideology, and demographics, but most tellingly, the role of geography in the unfolding course of the war.” Nicholas Basbanes, Fine Books Magazine “[T]houghtful, incisive, and so much more than repetitious accounts of which regiment went where…. From the first paragraph it is evident that this is a thoughtful work…. [Keegan] breaks down the elements of battle in the war, noting the unusual fact that they were so frequent compared to other wars of the time, and so intense, and ponders how a single democratic society could produce such a ferocious intensity of war against itself….cogent, well-argued and insightful book, which approaches so much of the story from a vantage different than that of most of our Civil War scholarship.” William C. Davis, The Military Book Club “[In t]his sophisticated survey….Keegan places battle strategy at the core of his narrative but does not get mired in the sandbox of the mechanics of war. His balanced interpretation illuminates changes shaped by combat, but his analysis moves beyond battlefield outcomes….With fluid assurance Keegan distils the challenging literature that has made the Civil War one of the 19th century’s most popular subjects [and] weaves together America’s rebirth of freedom with the transformative powers of a war that turned home guards into warriors when citizen soldiers replaced professional combatants…. Keegan’s encyclopaedic knowledge pays rich dividends, as he invokes examples, from Waterloo to the Somme, from Sherlock Holmes to Churchill [while his] asides offer fresh insight…. The precision and punch of Keegan’s narrative will please a broad audience.” Catherine Clinton, BBC History Magazine“Keegan’s observations on the human and logistic factors are fascinating [and] contain the essence of what made the war different. Keegan’s lifelong study of war and engagement with American history from his earliest years endow his prose with a majesty of judgment….it is hard to see how Keegan’s masterful and thought-provoking book could be beaten.” Allan Mallinson, The Times (London)“Instead of adding to the pile of chronicles of the American Civil War, [Keegan] has written a critique of them, from the point of view of a deep-thinking, distinguished military historian [with] penetrating insight, a trenchant style and unexpected angles of approach….a delightful conceit, elegantly executed….The emphasis on geography is…most original….full of unexpected treasures….All Civil War buffs will enjoy this study and learn something from it.” Hugh Brogan, Telegraph (London)“One of our finest military historians, Keegan brings a shrewd and discerning eye to [the Civil War]…. [Keegan’s] grasp of how the generals wrested to formulate grand strategy in a context of evolving resources, an uncertain appreciation of topography in the absence of good maps, and definitive developments on the battlefield [exemplify his] commanding grasp of warfare in the modern era. The American Civil War derives much of its freshness from the author’s broad perspective across time and place.” Richard Carwardine, Literary Review “Sir John’s achievement is to bring an international perspective….As well as looking back at European influences, Sir John looks forward to how the civil war changed European warfare.” Economist “one of the world’s most eminent military historians….[presents] a new overview of what can truly be regarded as the first modern war….In its range and sweep, this book is difficult to better and promises to become the definitive account of the conflict from this side of the Atlantic.” John Crossland, Daily Mail “[The] leading military historian of the English-speaking world….has now turned this hand to writing a comprehensive military history of the American Civil War….rich and nutritious book….fascinating….excellent portraits of all the principal commanders on both sides….every page of this book is incisive and readable. Even American experts on this terrible and absorbing conflict will learn much from Keegan’s account of it.” Paul Johnson, Standpoint “a captivating narrative, huge in scope.” Elizabeth Grice, Telegraph“engaging….The master of military history [writes] a highly readable overview of the war that goes far beyond merely describing who fought where. Through Keegan’s book, one gains an understanding of why the battles happened as they did, where they did, and how they fit into the whole story of the war and its resulting influe… About the Author John Keeganwas for many years senior lecturer in military history at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst, and has been a fellow at Princeton University and a visiting professor of history at Vassar College. He is the author of twenty books, including the acclaimed The Face of Battle and The Second World War. He is the defense editor of The Daily Telegraph (London). He lives in Wiltshire, England. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. North and South Divide AMERICA IS DIFFERENT. Today, when American “exceptionalism,” as it is called, has become the subject of academic study, the United States, except in wealth and military power, is less exceptional than it was in the years when it was to be reached only by sailing ship across the Atlantic. Then, before American culture had been universalised by Hollywood, the technology of television, and the international music industry, America really was a different place and society from the Old World, which had given it birth. Europeans who made the voyage noted differences of every sort, not only political and economic, but human and social as well. Americans were bigger than Europeans—even their slaves were bigger than their African forebears—thanks to the superabundance of food that American farms produced. American parents allowed their children a freedom not known in Europe; they shrank from punishing their sons and daughters in the ways European fathers and mothers did. Ulysses S. Grant, the future general in chief of the Union armies and president of the United States, recalled in his memoirs that there was “never any scolding or punishment by my parents, no objection to rational enjoyments such as fishing, going to the creek a mile away to swim in summer, taking a horse and visiting my grandparents in the adjoining county, fifteen miles off, skating on the ice in winter, taking a horse and sleigh when there was snow on the ground.” It was a description of childhood as experienced in most prosperous country-dwelling families of the period. The Grants were modestly well-to-do, Jesse Grant, the future president’s father, having a tanning business and also working an extensive property of arable land and forest. But then most established American families, and the Grants had come to the New World in 1630, were prosperous. It was prosperity that underlay their easy way with their offspring, since they were not obliged to please neighbours by constraining their children. The children of the prosperous were nevertheless well-behaved because they were schooled and churchgoing. The two went together, though not in lockstep. Lincoln was a notably indulgent father though he was not a doctrinal Christian. Churchgoing America, overwhelmingly Protestant before 1850, needed to read the Bible, and north of the Mason-Dixon line, which informally divided North from South, four-fifths of Americans could read and write. Almost all American children in the North, and effectively all in New England, went to school, a far higher proportion than in Europe, where literacy even in Britain, France, and Germany lay around two-thirds. America was also becoming college-going, with the seats of higher education, Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Princeton, the College of William and Mary, established and flourishing. America could afford to fund and run colleges because it was already visibly richer than Europe, rich agriculturally, though it was not yet a food-exporting economy, and increasingly rich industrially. It was a newspaper country with a vast newspaper-reading public and a large number of local and some widely distributed city newspapers. Its medical profession was large and skilful, and the inventiveness and mechanical aptitude of its population was remarked upon by all visitors. So too was the vibrant and passionate nature of its politics. America was already a country of ideas and movements, highly conscious of its birth in freedom and its legacy of revolution; anti-imperialism had been its founding principle. During the decades before the Civil War, America was experiencing an industrial boom and its own distinctive industrial revolution. England’s industrial revolution had taken its impetus from the development of steam power, fuelled by the island’s abundant deposits of coal and directed to the exploitation of its large deposits of metal ores. Early-nineteenth-century America was also beginning to dig coal and iron ore, of which its soil contained enormous quantities, but at the outset it was two other sources of power which drove its proliferating factories and workshops: waterpower and wood. The rivers of New England, New York, and Pennsylvania were harnessed to turn waterwheels and its extensive forests to supply timber for burning. In Europe the days were long gone when forests could be cut down to supply heat. The Continent, outside Scandinavia and the Russian interior, was highly deforested. In America, trees were still an encumbrance which had to be felled to provide land for farming, but which also, when sawn, provided the raw material for every sort of building and manufactured item. America needed deforestation if its soils were to be farmed in the future, and in that process industrialisation and land clearing went hand in hand. During the 1830s and later, New York City consumed several million loads of wood every year, cut and stripped from Maine and New Jersey. It was only gradually that mines were dug and extended, originally by immigrants from the English coalfields and Welsh valleys, but by 1860 production in the Pennsylvanian anthracite fields had increased fortyfold in thirty years. By that date a distinctive economic geography of the United States could be discerned, with expanding industrial regions centred on New York and Philadelphia, exploited coalfields in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and the Allegheny region of the Appalachians, a developing industrial region around Pittsburgh, and a thriving textile and engineering zone in southern New England. In the North the proportion of farmworkers in the labour force had fallen below 40 percent, while it remained above 80 percent in the South. An economic map would show that there was no industrial centre south of a line drawn from St. Louis to Louisville to Baltimore; in the South nine-tenths of the population lived in the countryside, but in the North only a quarter. Timber also provided the steam power for paddleboats, which by 1850 were to be seen on every navigable waterway, and the railway locomotives, which were becoming familiar on the tracks which were stretching out to link all the more important cities to one another and to the seaboard ports. By 1850 there were 9,000 miles of track in the United States; by 1860, 30,000. Rivers and then canals had been the means of transportation and distribution in the early stages of the boom. Canal boats and river steamers were rapidly overtaken in importance by the railroad. By 1850, America had surpassed Britain, home of the railroad revolution, in miles of operating track; indeed, American track mileage exceeded that of the rest of the world put together.The United States was still an industrial client of Europe, particularly Britain, from which most manufactured goods came, but that was due to Britain’s head start in the industrial revolution. By the end of the century this would no longer be the case. In the meantime, America was ceasing to be a predominately rural country and becoming an urban one. At the outbreak of the Civil War, America had more country-dwellers than town-dwellers, many more in the South, but the trend was for town-dwellers to outnumber country-dwellers. Cities were being founded at a breakneck rate and growing at exponential speed. The old cities of colonial settlement, Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, retained their importance, but new cities were appearing and expanding, particularly beyond the Appalachian chain and even beyond the Mississippi; for a time Cincinnati promised to be the most important of the new metropolises, but it was rapidly overtaken by Chicago, which grew from a population of 5,000 in 1840 to 109,000 in 1860. It might be said that Chicago was only keeping pace with the United States itself, whose population increased from 5,306,000 in 1800 to 23,192,000 in 1850. Part of the increase came from migration, though the decades of mass immigration lay in the future; most of it was the result of a high birthrate. The astonishing productivity of the United States furnished work for all who chose to stay in the towns, while the abundant availability of land for settlement in the new states beyond the Appalachians and the Mississippi attracted would-be farmers, or employed farmers seeking better land, in large numbers. In whichever direction a visitor to the United States looked, the country was growing. It was not that America was giving up the land. On the contrary: in the twenty years before 1860 enormous areas of the subcontinent were put under the plough; but the work was done by internal migrants who abandoned their homes on the thin, worked-out soils of New England, Virginia, and the Carolinas to trek westward into the new land in and beyond the Mississippi and Missouri valleys. Federal land policy encouraged the migrants. In 1800 public land was sold at $2 an acre, with a quarter to be paid down and four years to pay off the residue. By 1820 the price had gone down to $1.25 an acre. Land was sold in subdivisions of a section of 640 acres. By 1832 the government accepted bids for a quarter of a quarter section, 40 acres. In 1862 Congress passed the Homestead Act, which allowed a settler free possession of 160 acres if farmed for five years. The legislation effectively transferred eighty million acres of public land into private hands, and accommodated half a million people. American land policy was the making of such states as Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, the Middle West proper. As settlement moved on to the more distant lands of the prairies in Iowa, Kansas, and Nebraska, the first comers got the best of the deal. The prairies were settled during an uncharacteristic era of moist climate, which conferred bountiful crops on the hardworking. By the twentieth century, desiccation had set in and many farms joined the dust bowl.Settlement was not exclusively by free men. Cotton profits pulled plantation owners westward into new lands during the period 1830–50, particularly onto the dark, rich soils of the “black belt” of Alabama and Mississippi, but even as far away as the river lands of Texas. It is calculated that 800,000 slaves were mo… Read more

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐Pls note: I’m dyslexic and, try as I might, I can’t catch every error or missing word. I appreciate your patience.Despite the nit-picking by some reviewers (both from readers and professional reviewers), this book is an excellent addition to the canon of Civil War histories. (This is not to say the nit-picking is wrong; I too was surprised when I came across the passage where Sir John misstated that Eisenhower desegregated the military; or the error about US casualties in the WWII). It can’t really be disputed that the book needs a good second editing/fact checking.These things having been noted, none of them detract from the quality of the book as a whole or Keegan’s engaging prose. This book is something of an expansion of his study of Grant’s generalship in his landmark “The Mask of Command” and the themes developed in the section of that book on Grant are fully fleshed-out here.Also, being a foreigner, Keegan has no axe to grind. Nor does he romanticize the South’s fall–as has so often been done in both history, literature and film. For example, the late Shelby Foote was a wonderful writer but he was a Southern partisan thru-and-thru. (In fact I was unable to finish his trilogy on the war so blatant did Foote’s bias become by the middle of the second volume.)Much of the dissatisfaction, in my opinion, comes from Keegan’s decision to follow his usual methodology, i.e., avoiding a straight narrative in exchange for breaking the war down into its different aspect and exploring them individually. This has been his approach, essentially, throughout all of his books–as even any casual reader of Sir John’s work will have noted.As a Briton, he avoids the usual cliches about Civil War generals: that Lee and Jackson were military geniuses of the very highest order and Grant and Sherman were nothing but clumsy butchers and vandals. Both, are of course, myths. Especially potent since Southerners still make up a disproportionate percentage of both officers and enlisted personnel in the modern US military.Sir John demolishes all of that and does so deftly. He gives Lee and Jackson credit where it’s due while also noting the disastrous short-comings of their opponents (McClellan, Joe Hooker, Burnside, et al). Given the latter three’s catastrophic battle management, it’s hard to believe even mediocre generals wouldn’t have beaten them. Sir John also notes that despite early Confederate successes, Lee and Jackson lacked the strategic ability to exploit them or find a way to force the Union forces to fight THEIR war–exactly what Grant and Sherman did. The South paid dearly for this lack of imagination.I for one found it refreshing not to have to wade through the usual fog of the “Lost Cause” myth that still attaches itself to many Civil War histories.Keegan lays out the appalling difficulties faced by leaders military and political, on both sides, in trying to fight a war in a country whose terrain–even today–is almost completely unsuited for applying standard doctrines of warfare. Whether they were the stale, diagrmatic Jominian theory (of Napoleon’s generalship) that led to so many bloody encounters or the strategy developed from the mechanized warfare of the WWII. The wilderness of America, so quick to reassert itself so aggressively (anyone needing proof of this need only visit the eastern half of the country where so much farmland has reverted to second-growth forest in a mere 60s years since family farming became economically unsustainable), and the land’s topography were so difficult that only commanders of genius could hope to cope with it and learn to use it (as well as the railroads) to achieve victory.Grant and Sherman, as Keegan points out in careful analysis, did so. Lee, Johnston, Bragg and Hood (only Jackson showed a feel for terrain that came anywhere near Grant and Sherman’s) failed to do so and lost the war despite the fact that the Southern soldier was, arguably, better, on average, than his Northern opponent. I also have a theory about the quality of Southern non-commissioned officers being superior to their Union equivalents–but that’s a book length exercise of its own.The careful analyses of all the major factors shows us why Northern victory was inevitable given that the political will was a constant (not something to be taken for granted as Lincoln’s aggressive measures to quash decent demonstrated).One thing I did find curious was Sir John’s failure to mention something Shelby Foote noted in Ken Burn’s famed documentary of the war: “The North fought the war with one hand tied behind it’s back.” Unlike World War II, the North failed to harness its economic and military potential for total war against the rebellious states. Had Lincoln done so (or been able to?), the war would almost certainly have ended much sooner and with much less bloodshed. And the hatred burned so deeply into the hearts of my Southern ancestors would have been greatly mitigated. The closest Sir John comes to grasping this is in his justified castigation of McClellan’s timid mediocrity as a battlefield commander. For a few short days, in the Peninsula Campaign, the “Young Napoleon” (if ever a nickname was more inappropriate I can’t think of one!) had the South by the throat. As even the most casual viewer of the Burns’ docu knows, he frittered away the chance to almost bloodlessly capture Richmond and throttle the Confederacy in its cradle.Lastly, as he did in “The Mask of Command”, Keegan notes the dismissive and condescending attitude of European generals (even quoting the Elder Moltke’s insulting description of the two armies as “mere armed mobs”) which, coupled with the unique circumstances of the Wars of German Unification against Austria and France, led the Continental “titans” to ignore completely the horrific rehearsal of trench warfare in the desperate fighting for Petersburg and Richmond in the last year of the war. The failure to draw any lessons from, and the contempt for, the American experience would have the most disastrous consequences for the human race in the 70 years following the Battle of Sedan (1870).One wonders if a historian such as Keegan had been writing in the 1880s or 1900s, if the lessons of the American Civil War could have penetrated the thick skulls of German, French and British general staffs and saved the world from the barbarism of the Great European Civil War of 1914-45? It’s a nice thought but it’s doubtful that even a Sir John Keegan’s words could have made any impact at all in the set-in-cement military thinking prior to 1914.Grade: A-. Very much recommended–especially when read in tandem with “The Mask of Command”.

⭐For students of military history, John Keegan needs no introduction. If you’re reading this review, you know who he is. So it was with great surprise that I discovered he had written a history of the American Civil War, the war that first got me into military history in elementary school. Having long ago moved on from the subject to specialize in other areas, I enjoyed revisiting the Civil War as I read it. I then turned to other reviews–including McPherson’s in the New York Times–and became concerned.But first, this is what Keegan tries to do: the first chunk of the book is topical, treating a number of special issues with pre-war relevance, such as geography, life in the various parts of the antebellum United States, and the state of the American military. Keegan’s reach is so broad that to subtitle this book “A Military History” is really a disservice to the book, since it treats a lot more areas than the military. The second part of the book is a roughly chronological treatment of the war itself. The third is another topical section, in which Keegan discusses issues that arose as the war went on–wounds and medicine, the war in the arts, the role of African-Americans, and so forth. He wraps up with Appomattox Courthouse.I freely admit that the quality of the book is uneven. The most noticeable problem as I read it was the choppy editing. The book is very repetitious. At first I thought it might be helpful for the general reader, but by the end so much information had been repeated that I was getting impatient each time I recognized things I’d already read. A few chapters are inexplicably constructed like this: first, Keegan describes a battle and its results in general terms, and immediately follows with a detailed description of the battle. This structure gives his chapters on the war in the west a loop-da-loop feeling that was odd, to say the least. And there are factual errors. According to specialists on the Civil War, a lot of them. Looking at a number of them after having read the book, I’d agree with James McPherson in that they are probably the result of carelessness or sloppy research, but had the book been edited properly most of them should have been caught before the book went to press. A number of reviewers on Amazon have taken issue with the conclusions Keegan drew from the war, but these are hardly factual errors and lie within the zone of legitimate interpretational debate.So why do I still like the book? First, despite its frequent redundancy, it is readable. Keegan’s style was far more dense at the beginning of his career, and though this book does not represent his best work, heavy editing for a second edition should improve it–as well as fix the factual errors. Good editing would also fix what I think are only perceived errors, where Keegan failed to make his point clear. One such area is in his discussion of the rivers of the western theatre. McPherson, in his review, points out that Keegan says two contradictory things about the rivers–that they both posed as obstacles to Union advance and avenues for Union advance. Keegan did say both–what I think he meant, in context, was that they were obstacles to infantry and cavalry unsupported by gunboats and riverine craft, and only later became useful axes of advance. And returning to the repetition of information, it occurred to me at some point that the redundant information would actually make the book useful as a classroom text (provided it is cleansed of errors), so chapters could be cherrypicked for a reading list.The biggest problem I had with the book was the maps. They were not good. They rarely included important names and locations Keegan discussed in the book, and though I couldn’t find any credit for the maps in the copyright information or back matter, I suspect they were cribbed from an earlier book.Despite this book’s problems, it’s still got a healthy dose of vintage Keegan. His analysis of the leaders in the Civil War was very good–I disagree with some of his points, especially in the Grant vs. Lee debate, but his critical insight is appreciated. A vicious editing process before the issue of the paperback and a few corrected facts will make this good book excellent.Recommended.

⭐‘The American Civil War was to prove one of the most ferocious wars ever fought, a factor of its geography, since the enemy’s personnel, in the absence of geographic objectives apart from each side’s capital, presented itself as the only target at which to strike’, so writes John Keegan in this mesmerising account of the horrific war from 1861 to 1865. It was, in Keegan’s view, a necessary war. Keegan focuses his account on the military strategies and battles, even giving detailed counts of the casualties after each major battle. His biopics and descriptions of the leaders on both sides – both the good and the bad – provide an understanding of how important leaders are in war. Luck often plays a part. An example is a battle in which an officer misinterpreted the topography and his lines, believing and reporting a gap. Hence reinforcements were drawn elsewhere to cover that gap, resulting in a real gap elsewhere. The Civil War was as bloody and fierce in the seas and rivers as it was on land. The navies on both sides were either trying to blockade or evade one. The Northern navy, in the end, proved more stable and numerically superior, and that tipped the balance of naval power in the war. This is not a political history of the Civil War, and no ruminations on the Gettysburg address, but the battle there is vividly described. An entire chapter is devoted to the battle of Vicksburg – arguably the most important and decisive battle of the War. As if scouring the ruins after a war, Keegan considers the efforts and contributions of African Americans, and a survey of the aftermath in his chapter, ‘Walt Whitman and Wounds’.

⭐This is advertised as the Kindle version of the paperback/hardcover versions. The actual book versions are 400 pages long–the kindle “thing” is 53, and a rambling, incoherent selection which is virtually unreadable and bears no resemblance at all to the real work. certainly a waste of money, and clearly is not what it pretends to be. I’ve returned it.

⭐Really liked it. Read lots of his books and this one was just what I wanted on the American Civil War. Some war books get lost in numbers of units and ranks and terrain.This was great just enough information to get Bull Run, Antietam, Gettysburg, Chikamagua etcThe great info on Sherman, Grant and Lee, Jackson and other generals. Excellent chapters on slavery and the economics of the war. Made me want to know even more about Lincoln.The more I reflect the more I really can recommend this book highly.

⭐The book was exactly as described by Rosa Books- as new condition and delivery was far quicker than the stated date. As far as the title is concerned, this is a readable, concise history of the US Civil War. The repetitions mentioned by other reviewers have to be seen in the context of a war across a number of theatres and sectors, so for clarity’s sake it makes perfect sense to recap, say, 2 chapters down the line to ensure the reader is up with events and strategic details on returning to the next phase of that sector of the fighting. Great book and recommended.

⭐A waste of money. Skims the details and gets repetitive. Buy Shelby Foote’s imperious civil war narrative if you want any real detail. I guess if you only have a passing interest on the subject it will while away a few hours…

⭐Until I read this excellent book by John Keegan I didn’t know the ins & outs behind the American Civil War. How simply the two sides slid into a terrible civil war, it almost seemed inevitable and was another depressing example about Man being unable to resolve differences without recourse to war. I didn’t realise how many battles were fought altogether and how intensive the fighting was. The casualties were staggering, both combat & through illness, and the two sides determination to engage in combat was without parallel. Yes, in Wellington & Napoleon’s day men formed up opposite each other and fired volleys at each other but the American Civil War rifles were longer range and inflicted worse wounds. This book covered all the basics effectively and I’m now looking forward to reading the DK book which has lots of illustrations of the weapons, uniforms etc

Keywords

Free Download The American Civil War: A Military History in PDF format
The American Civil War: A Military History PDF Free Download
Download The American Civil War: A Military History 2009 PDF Free
The American Civil War: A Military History 2009 PDF Free Download
Download The American Civil War: A Military History PDF
Free Download Ebook The American Civil War: A Military History