I think this would have been a better anthology if the editor had spent more time finding sources. It doesn't really seem like he searched lesser-known documents; just about everything here is pretty well known. The quality ranges from excellent to somewhat pointless.

I purchased this book without having any firsthand knowledge of it as a background source and I haven't been minutely disappointed. Kadzis assembled both primary and secondary sources either from the time of the Civil War or from more modern secondary source writings about aspects of that war. In any case the extracts were singularly well chosen and are valuable for my purposes. I would recommend Kadzis' compilation to any person searching for a single source of Civil War rememberances written at the time or of modern fiction writers using the events of that war around which to build their longer story. The writings he has selected are very useful and interesting.

This book is in a series put out by Adrenaline books and each book contains certain selections chosen by the editor. The selections are generally either excerpts from books, excerpts from diaries and journals, short stories, or an occasional essay. I look at how good the writing is, and how good the stories are.

This is a strong anthology in many ways. It had a variety of civil war literature that helps to give a fuller picture of the civil war experience. There are many letters, stories, and diary entries and even a copy of orders given by a General. We get a picture of the inner workings of the war by people directly involved, as well as a picture of the world outside the war and how it was effected. We hear aspects of the war from multiple points of view. A soldier's fighting experience, a General's commanding view, letters to loved ones back home, the viewpoint of a young southern girl, life in a military prison. The reader gets to see not just the war, but the world it encompassed.

The anthology is made even stronger by the selections of famous people's writings. We get to read the words of General Ulysses S. Grant, Stephen Crane, Generals Pickett and Sherman, Abraham Lincoln, and even Walt Whitman (who worked in the hospitals treating wounded soldiers from both sides).

The only negative thing about this book is that it has no amazing powerful pieces. Almost all the selections are good (with two or three exceptions), but none are outstanding, in terms of either the writing or the story. There are no exceptionally well written pieces and no really incredible stories. This is unfortunate, but does not detract too much from the overall book. And also this volume includes some fiction, which generally does not exist in these series of books. Other than that the book is good and worth reading.