2008-06-29 Fascinating and Accessible History

I came to this book as a Brit who knew little or nothing about the American Civil War and it certainly did its job for me. The wealth of detail is facinating, the analysis of the reasons for the war illuminating and the conclusions explaining the victory of the North are coherent and convincing.

I came to a realistion of how important the American Civil War was. How different the world would be today had the South prevailed.

It also depressing how little we seem to progress, for example in terms of atrocities committed, how different was the American Civil war to the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia.

Two complaints were 1) I found the temporal progress of the war a little difficult to follow at times, i.e. which events were occurring simultaneously and 2) in my paperback edition the maps are basically unreadable.

One piece of advice for non-US readers, make sure you have a detailed map of the US to hand while reading.

Definitely recommended