An excellent book for my needs. I wanted to read a shorter book on the American Civil War that didn't get bogged down in historical side issues. The story is focused on the final stage of the war when Grant was made Lt. General by Lincoln until its end. I never knew what happened to Grant, Lee, or Davis once the war stopped with Davis being captured. This book is poetic and fixed in what it wants to communicate. Written in the 1970's, it is a history book which tries to be fair and even handed as opposed to the currrent style of historical works which are wholly revisionist while condescending to mention minor persons and events for situational context.

This book is by no means exhaustive, and unfortunately it still manages to list far too many names which appear only once and then disappear.

By reading this book you get a sense of what type of losses the country suffered during the conflict. I didn't know that the Southern Confederacy considered itself another country and that they thought they could win the war by withstanding a siege against Richmond fighting only defensively. The South's Jubal Early was man I had never heard of before. His battlefield behind-the-lines adventures which were recounted and the lessons learned by the North from the entire conflct made this book's historical writer a person I am very grateful to. This has been such a positive experience, I now look forward to reading more material on the Civil War. The author is very respectful of Lincoln and his status as a preserver of the Union.
The book's construction is beautiful: stiff paper stock, sewn binding, yellow endpages, bibliography, readable Times font, maps, index. ( )