Ransoms account of daily life in Andersonville prison is without a doubt one of the best I've read. His eloquent description of the pain, torture and horror, so common in Civil War POW encampments, makes the reader feel as if they are actually there with Ransom. A very quick read. Although more than 250 pages of text, I read it in one evening......Great book

This book was one of the first books I read about the Civil War. I could not put the thing down! It is not only a true story about the Andersonville Prison, but also a heck of a story showing courage and will! I recommend this book HEAVILY! A MUST READ

Ransom's Andersonville is such a interesting first-hand account of the daily miseries of being a Union prisoner. Ransom mentions his stay in Richmond before being transferred to Andersonville, Georgia. He also describes his daily affairs, hardships, horrors and escapes with much detail. Due to the horrid conditions of the camp, details are captured by Ransom and are sometimes quite graphic. Ransom thought that someday his diary would reach others and certainly didn't want others not to know what hardships actually carried on daily. His vivid descriptions of camp life and his own personal battle of deteriorating health encompasses the reader in this book. His daring escape after being released from Andersonville while being shipped to another southern prison is another gripping tale that awaits the reader in this very interesting story. It's a great book about humanity and suffering. One wonders how people can inflict such burden upon prisoners, though by 1864 the supply withered Confederacy only created further havoc for those contained. This book is a graphic tale of Andersonville and an important asset to explaining Civil War History. 5 STARS!!

This is a slim, primarily narrative volume dealing with the battle of Gettysburg. It's full of great pictures (including some really gory photos)and maps. As usual, Catton writes beautifully, although his description of Pickett's Charge is a little understated for him. What this is not is seminal scholarship -- Catton's introduction, referring to the battle as "fated", is absurdly though endearingly positivist, and his analysis of the battle and its causes is quite basic. I think the book would be particularly well suited to the amateur or, as another reviewer suggested, to someone who has seen the battlefield as a tourist and wants to learn a little more about what happened there.

Bruce Catton guides you carefully and clearly through the whole battle. His writing is concise, yet picturesque. The book was my constant companion while visiting the Gettysburg battlefield. The maps are excellent. Bruce Catton is an even-handed chronicler of this monumental event.

A change in Focus--Grant takes the Reins

Until 1864, the Army of the Potomac had never won a campaign. Each Union attempt to capture Richmond drove south, was repulsed, withdrew to Washington, found a new general, and tried again. After his successes at Vicksburg and Chattanooga, Grant came east to a promotion, to general in charge of all Union Armies.

Grant brought a different focus, and Catton defines this superbly in this book, drawing on many of Grant's memoranda to other officers, as well as President Lincoln. Catton captures the essence of a Grant campaign: hold on to the enemy, grasp and retain the initiative, and always move your logistics aggresively forward.

Catton also tries, albeit weakley, to show that Grant was not a "pure" attritionist. He offers examples of Grant's desires to push west and sever Richmond from the Shenandoah. Catton explores the political reality of uncovering Washington to a Confederate thrust, while attacking the logistics that sustained Confederate armies, while Sherman simultaneously attacked Atlanta and its strategic railhead. Catton states that after the battle of Cold Harbor Ggrant's numerical superiority was at its lowest level, but he does not provide the hard math to support this stance. On the other hand, Catton shows well the manuever warfare used by Grant to slip away after Cold Harbor, steal a march, and get across the James River before Lee, stripped of his cavalry, could discover the move and react.

This book does a very solid job of capturing Grant's determination, his unyielding efforts to impose his will on the leaders and staff of the Army of the Potomac, and to integrate the political realities of volunteers, political appointee generals and a presidential election with the cold hard reality of constant campaigning.

A good read not just for students of the martial art, but for any leader who must address the Sisyphean task of invigorating old "we've always done it that way" people with a new ethos and drive.

This is a well-researched account of the last two years of the Civil War (1863-1865). The harsh realities of the battles and living conditions are especially given great detail here. The final days of the war and the surrender of General Lee are extremely poignant as the author examines the tattered remains of the once invincible Army of Northern Virginia. The exchange between the victors and the vanquished at Appomattox is the highlight of the book. The author also takes pains not to overlook any of Grant's military blunders such as Cold Harbor and gives an even-handed viewpoint throughout. I recommend this book for anyone who is interested in the darkest days of our nation's history.

This book did not hold my interest, primarily because it is too breezy. It is a companion to the PBS documentary. Unfortunately, it is not as successful as the video, perhaps because it is more difficult to write a documentary than to do a video of one. Ward provides a useful description of the difference between historians and documentarians: "Historians delight in telling us what our history is and what it means. The documentarian, on the other hand, as often delights in recording and conveying the simple fact that we have had a history at all: that there was once a time when people looked like this, or sounded like that, or felt these ways about such things. The historical documentary is often more immediate and more emotional than history proper because of its continual joy in making the past present through visual and verbal documents."

The most compelling parts of this book are not by documentarians, but by historians. These are essays by prominent Civil War scholars, including Shelby Foote and James M. McPherson, authors of the most highly regarded books about the Civil War--"The Civil War: A Narrative" by the former and "Battle Cry for Freedom" by the latter.

The illustrations in this book are not as good as those in "The American Heritage New History of the Civil War," but does have more and better maps.

Persons interested in an overview of the Civil War would be better off turning to the PBS video or to a book.

Gepffrey Ward's narrative is a complete departure from the textbook Civil War stories that we tend to read today. His is a fascinating account that deals with the ordinary people and the history that they lived through. I found this book an especially rewarding buy because of it's very interesting and absorbing language and illustrations. Overall, this book has made a particularly deep impact and led me to look at the civil war as a time, when hell was truly incarnate on earth.

In view of Ward's excellence in writing I would give him five stars, and also because he tells the full stories of Gettysburg, Bull Run (both of them), Antietam, Shiloh, and Appamattox Court House. He brings the Civil War to life like nobody else can. I am especially touched by his quotation from the letter of Col. Sullivan Ballou of Rhode Island, it was a tear-jerking moment for me when I saw the series and when I read this book over and over again. This book is an amazing readable account of a gone-by era and I appreciate the effort that Ken Burns and Geoffrey Ward to bringing this bloody, romantic, and adventurous era to life just as they have in The West with Dayton Duncan, Baseball, and Lewis & Clark.

Read this book for the story and the pictures!

When I was a boy, my father had a two vol. set put out by American Heritage called "The Civil War." Its words, pictures, sidebars, and maps helped instill in me a fascination with the war and history.

Burns and Ward have done the same service for a new generation. This is a fine one volume treatment of the Civil War done in a most accessible fashion. The words provide a good overview and summary of the subject. What brings it alive are the many pictures, maps, focus subjects and commentaries in this coffee table book. The media and elements come together to fascinate and captivate the reader. This book is a companion to Burn's monumental ten part PBS television series by the same title. The book captures it's style well, and even uses some of the most memorable documents -- like the romantic and haunting Sullivan Ballou (sp?) letter written prior to the first Bull Run that foretold the passing of its author and a simpler America.

Althought the material is strictly introductory, even the serious Civil War student will find fascination at haveing a story they know so well, so well illustrated and illuminated.

Introduce your children to this book and watch them become interested in our country's greatest story.

I stand to inherit the original, two-volume, slipcase edition of this historical overview, so I can console myself that there won't be a daunting search on Ebay or elsewhere for this must-have in years to come. As it is, the summary by Bruce Catton is concise and engaging - a perfect entré to his full-length books on the Civil War.

My gripe with this revised edition is the overall quality of the press: the pages aren't as glossy and weighty as the original, and worse, the photos look poor by comparison. Trust me, the choice of paper matters! Otherwise, it's still a good recommendation for anyone looking for an absorbing yet accessible history of the traumatic period when America tested its democracy in blood and fire.

This is a beautiful, lavishly illustrated history of the civil war. Unfortunately, the illustrations overwhelm the text. Readers interested in a solid account of the Civil War would be better off turning to a text-only book such as James M. McPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom.

This book bears comparison with another recent heavily illustrated one-volume overview of the civil war, Geoffrey C. Ward's The Civil War (companion to the PBS documentary). This book has more striking illustrations, in that they are in full-blown vivid color, whereas many in Ward's are in sepia or black and white. Ward's, though, has much better maps. It is frustrating that in this book it is not always clear exactly where battles occurred, because of the lack of maps. On the other hand, this book is better written than Ward's.

This book is useful as an adjunct to other accounts of the civil war, but if you are interested in reading only one general book about the war, this is not the one.

With a pitiful knowledge of the Civil War based on various movies featuring the likes of Randolph Scott and Clark Gable, I was interested in reading an historical text about this defining American event. I was lucky in choosing this lavish volume to do so. With a lucid narrative by the late Bruce Catton as its centre, this Heritage volume has the added advantage of illuminating that text with art (Winslow Homer et al),photos,drawings, maps, cartoons, bills, newspapers, and illustrations of significant battles which are a model of their kind. Whilst the art tends to romanticise (cf the evocative NIGHT BIVOUAC OF THE SEVENTH REGIMENT NEW YORK AT ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, VIRGINIA by Sanford Robinson Gifford) the photos reveal the horror and pity of the event and are stunning in their power. Added to this are,from time to time, the words of poet Walt Whitman. Whilst some historical facts may appear confusing - on p286 the illustrated map tells us that Stonewall Jackson was "fatally wounded" by one of his own pickets; on p 282 Stonewall Jackson is "mortally wounded (2May), shot down by his own troops in the confused fighting"; and on p 289 (10 May) Stonewall Jackson dies of pneumonia, albeit, weakened by wounds. Be that as it may, many of the details provided by the works supplementing the central text are fascinating in allowing the reader to realise the effects of war on the the populace and the consequences this must have had on the psyche of generations to come.

Item: WOMEN of the South ran out of PINS and walked around with downcast eyes looking for PINS. Thorns were gathered and dried to use as PINS. Item: CONSCRIPTION: In the South conscription was well implemented, in the North it was a DISGRACE. If drafted, a man could get out of it for $300 or hire a substitute to take his place. The COLORED ORPHAN ASYLUM on FIFTH AVENUE was attacked and burnt because of conscription exempting blacks. Item: PRISON CAMPS: 55,000 soldiers died in the prison camps of the North and the South, the conditions of which rivalled Nazi Concentration camps, indeed may have been worse. Item: BATTLE OF CHATTANOOGA - an uphill "miracle" of courage by Union soldiers. The South lost the war not through want of courage and skill but because the war "wore it out". Not one mile of railroad was produced in the Confederacy during the war. The moral dimension of slavery may have been another factor but only in the latter half of the tragedy. Again, the Union navy played a pivotal role which I for one was completely unaware of. Reading this work has been an engrossing and revalatory experience for me.

the book was alright, all of us liked it and in some parts didn't want to put it down. We were also bored in some parts and wanted to go to sleep. When I got done the book I was glad it was over with and I got some information on my part.

Catton covers two centuries in 11 chapters and just under 200 pages. The book is literally crammed with information in a mishmash of military acquisitions, missionaries, Native American tribes (at least a dozen are mentioned), woods runners, capitalists and (of coarse) politicians. However, Catton makes good use of brevity: he does not waste print on the minutiae of strategic military maneuverings as so many historians do, but rather he carefully selects and explores the details of the social and technological events that shaped the territory, the state and the nation (the "open shop" lumber industry, federal land grant programs, the Toledo strip, "wildcat" banks and the Great Railroad Conspiracy). As historians (and Michiganders) go, Catton is a romantic, and even melodramatic at times, but never boring. This book is thoroughly enjoyable.

I live in Ohio, but I was raised in Michigan. Reading this book once a year (as well as the MORNING TRAIN) reminds me of my place in the universe. If you want to know about Michigan, Bruce Catton delievers.

I was disappointed in this. I would have thought the great narrative historian could have produced more vivid and engaging historical fiction.

Banners at Shenandoah is very much young adult or even for younger audiences; it's the story of a young man who becomes Sheridan's guidon bearer. One thing I did like is that the account is not romanticized. Northern depredations in the Shenandoah, scouting in Southern uniform, etc. are described--though strangely separated from the idol-worshipping view of Sheridan himself.

But I found the account vague, bloodless both literally and metaphorically, lacking in description and tension. The Rebels, in particular, are faceless--you'd hardly know they wore gray.

Not something I'd recommend seeking out. There is better Civil War young adult fiction out there.

I read "Banners at Shenandoah" when I was 14, and have been hooked on the U.S. Civil War ever since. Considered one of the foremost Civil War historians, Bruce Catton has produced an excellent work of fiction that combines hundreds of small, authentic details into the highly personal story of a young soldier who serves under the legendary Union general, Phil Sheridan. While a work of fiction, Catton obviously wrote this book with a historian's eye for accuracy and truth. Highly recommended.

Bruce Catton's A Short History of The Civil War is an excellent 1-book introduction to the Civil War.

I listened to the audio version of this book, and the reader initially struck me as monotone. Yet very quickly one becomes absorbed in the interesting content the book has to offer.

No, the book is not as detailed as Shelby Foote's 3-book narrative of the Civil War. But I am glad I listened to Catton's first, as it outlines the events leading to the Civil War, major battles, and personalities that made my understanding of subsequent books greater.

I recommend this book either for the general reader who has only time to read 1 book on the Civil War, and I recommend the book for Civil War readers as an overview of the entire conflict to create context for subsequent readings.

The Bold and magnificent dream covers U.S. History from 1492-1815 in just 500 pages. The book is well written and enjoyable to read. However if you are really trying to learn our very early history this book will not satisfy your thirst. On topics such as The Battle of Saratoga, The Battle of New Orleans, Prince Philips War etc. that I had already read about, I realized how lightly each topic was covered and how much really interesting history is being missed. Overall I really did enjoy the book. If you are looking for a well written overview this is a great book. You will certainly learn a lot more from it than I was ever taught in high school or college.

This book was a marvelous read. The author kept my interest throughout the first two-thirds of the book. However, he does deal blandly with Grant's political career. Overall though, quite touching and well done.