After all that has been written about Jackson, Vandiver's treatment is still the best. Highly recommended.

This is an essential book for anyone's personal library. Smart, concise, well-illustrated, and comprehensive it tells the story of one of early America's greatest field commanders. Never engaging the question of North versus South and the issues that sculpted the Civil War, Vandiver focuses on the man, his legend, and the simple values he built his life around.

I asked for this biography as a Christmas present 20 years ago. I finally got around to reading it, and I was not disappointed. Dr. Vandiver has written an first-rate biography which compares to Dumas Malone's sextet on Thomas Jefferson and Douglas S. Freeman's classic four-volume opus on Robert E. Lee. John Pershing probably has languished in obscurity in recent times because of the events which followed World War I (the Roaring Twenties, the Depression) and World War II, which resulted from, as Pershing himself warned, failing to fight World War I to a decisive finish. He is also denigrated by some as not being able to chase down Pancho Villa during the Punitive Expedition. Vandiver sets the record of history straight on Pershing, though, as nearly all biographers of great men are wont to do, he does lapse into hagiography and glosses too readily in many instances over his faults and weaknesses. Nevertheless he fairly portrays Pershing as the simple, direct, honest, energetic, efficient, and dedicated man and soldier who rose to the rank of General of the Armies, a rank attained only by George Washington before him. Vandiver traces Pershing from his youth, his sojourn as a teacher in a small school, and his cadet days at West Point, showing how his values and experiences moulded him well for the service and duty he would render his country for decades. From West Point, Pershing went west to become an Indian fighter, to Cuba in the Spanish-American War, and then to the Phillipines, where he conquered the wild Moro tribes of Mindanao. Pershing performed each of his assignments with excellence and bravery, always earning the highest praise from his superiors. He was a spit-and-polish martinet, insisting that his subordinates conform to the highest standards set at West Point. He never asked of his men anything he would not ask of himself, and he honestly believed that all that drill, efficiency, and discipline put his soldiers at the minimum risk when the tasks of campaigning and battle were at hand. He had no patience with slovenly subordinate officers who let their commands slide. Pershing did have a knack for selecting excellent subordinates, and rarely had problems getting his overall plans and objectives executed. The best part of Vandiver's work is that which describes Pershing's command of the AEF. The general did an incredible job of commanding the mobilization, buildup of troops and materiel in France, and ensuring the training of his Doughboys, all the time holding off repeated French and British attempts to siphon off and amalgamate the arriving American soldiers into their forces. Had the French and British succeeded, it is not inconceivable that they would have wasted thousands of American soldiers in the grinding, failing trench warfare the French and British were accustomed to on the Western Front. Pershing's dogged insistence on an American army angered the Allies, but proved decisive and effective in the last five months of the conflict. To their everlasting credit, both Secretary of War Newton Baker and President Wilson also never wavered from this course, and backed up Pershing fully whenever Lloyd George or Clemenceau tried to press their case over the general's head. Vandiver fully portrays the human side of General Pershing, including his marriage to Frances Warren, their brief 10 years together, and his grief at losing her and their three daughters in a fire at the Presidio in 1915. He also depicts Pershing's social circle as a young man, and the fortuitous friendships with men who became extremely influential and helpful to him later in life. Many of the subordinates he mentored and nurtured all either proved essential to the building and command of the AEF and/or became the pillars of America's armed forces in World War II (Marshall, Patton, and MacArthur, for example). This biography does have a few editorial flaws. Dr. Vandiver, who was a prodigy who never attended high school or undergraduate school, does some excellent writing for having had no formal coursework, but he does have a shocking weakness in writing subordinate clauses as separate sentences. Of which this is an example. A good editor would have caught the few dozen instances in this work and revised the grammar. Also Dr. Vandiver sometimes drops articles from a sentence, resulting in some clumsy passages. Again, good editing would have corrected these. At the end of the second volume, as Pershing's retirement approaches, Dr. Vandiver omits the necessary explanation that, in 1924, the mandatory retirement age in the armed forces was 64; the reader has to infer that from the narrative. Nevertheless Dr. Vandiver hit a home run with his biography of Pershing, and it deserved far more acclaim and exposure than it has enjoyed in the past 20 years. Reading about this genuine American hero was a breath of fresh air in these times of antiheroes. America today surely needs more men like General Pershing. Thanks to Dr. Vandiver, he will not be forgotten.

Many works about Jubal Early's 1864 Valley Campaign have been produced, but none come close to this one. Frank Vandiver's JUBAL'S RAID stands out as, by far, the most lively and insightful of all the 1864 Valley histories, keeping the reader riveted throughout. This is a superb book that should be on every Civil War library shelf.

Vandiver has authored many memorable books on Confederate and Civil War history. THEIR TATTERED FLAGS is a must is you are interested in the epic of the Confederacy. The author provides insight to Southern actions and thought that is not possible for less gifted writers, especially those who have not lived in the South. Read and enjoy!

Vandiver wrote a good historical document. If you are not into history this is not the book for you. It is not a novel about two brothers that go to war like I thought it was going to be. It is however an excellent source for information.

Vandiver does an excellent job on condensing the Civil war into one volume. It was an easy read. I would also recommend his other history book,Their Tattered Flags.

ANY HISTORIAN WHO CONFUSES THE NAME OF A GREAT GENERAL WITH THE ANCIENT PLYING OF HUMAN FLESH, AKA, HOOKERS, SHOULD BE FIRED FROM HIS POST AND REDUCED TO THE ENGAGEMENT WITH SADAM HUSSEIN. PERHAPS THE CONTEMPORY WORLD WOULD BETTER SUIT HIS KNOWLEDGE BASE.

Thanks to 2/14 "Sad" Review for piquing my curiosity, I got a copy and found Vandiver's 1001 Things Everyone Should Know About the Civil War to be a lot of fun, breaches notwithstanding! In fact, I checked the entry "Sad" complains about with the source, Francis Miller's outstanding 10-volumn series, Photographic History of the Civil War. Miller too has General Sherman leaning on the "breach" of the gun! Misspelling aside, the book is a good one, and I am grateful to a scholar of Vandiver's stature for taking the time to do a popular work of this nature. 1001 Thanks!

I must admit that the seemingly conflicting reviews here encouraged me to read this book, and I discovered that the negative reviewers did not take the larger view that the author obviously did, and look at the war as a cost to both sides, and a tragedy and loss to both the North and South. (thus a battle is both a victory and a defeat...)Their comments seem mean-spirited and obviously not thought out; nor was the preface read by some of them! This author has done a difficult task- reducing the war into 1001 things- extremely well in my view; the biographical sketches were insightful and poetic and all of the battle descriptions were vivid and exciting. Excerpts from diaries and military papers and miniscule details show the depth of knowledge and the scope of research of this author. I would recommend it.