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A review by larry1138
Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era by James M. McPherson
informative
slow-paced
5.0
James McPherson has written perhaps the greatest and most digestible modern volume on the Civil War made to date. It is highly detailed but not irksomely so. It is comprehensive but not detrimentally exhaustive. It is wide in scope but still retains a clear focus in its storytelling and analysis. It is an incredible analysis of military, political, cultural, and economic history of the Civil War era rolled into one incredible book (or audiobook as I have consumed it, which I perhaps recommend for those of you with limited shelf space. 900 pages is quite a lot).
If you are a history buff with any interest in the American Civil War, I have no choice but to recommend this volume, intimidating in its size as it may be. McPherson covers every conceivably important entity of the war: battles, elections, economic developments, diplomacy, social convention, governance, etc. It's quite possibly ALL here, at least the ideas that are most important to explore.
As an avid military history reader, I was impressed by McPherson's ability to quickly and concisely summarize the many, many battles covered during 4 years of war, some of which I've read whole books about. He does this in a way that leaves the reader with a decent idea of the scale of the battle, casualties, and impacts on the greater conflict, without getting bogged down in the details that would warrant their own dedicated book.
This then leaves him plenty of time to explore the deeper themes of the war, dedicating whole chapters to these concepts: states rights, emancipation, the institution of slavery, cultural differences between the North and South, governance during wartime, the Republican and Democratic parties and their machinations, and on and on, until the reader has no choice but to nearly totally understand the war. All throughout the book, the reader is immersed so completely, it's as if they are there, reading the newspapers as they come in reporting on disaster or success in the field, or flipping through the journals of soldiers and generals after yet another bloody conflict.
Due to the nature of current politics I believe it should be clearly stated that this book, despite being published originally in 1988 during a cultural revival of Confederate sympathy that seems to have only increased since then in the United States in 2023, is no opinionated support volume for the Lost Cause myth or Confederate ideology in general. McPherson seems to be levelheaded and staunchly academic in his study of the Civil War, highlighting the atrocities that slavery wrought on African Americans, of which modern Confederate apologists would rather leave alone or even criticize. Because of the incredible analysis McPherson provides about Northern and Southern societies preceding the war, and the clear and seemingly unbiased way he performs his analysis, I would honestly want this book/audiobook to be required reading for American school children.
There is simply too much for me to go into to fully show my praises for Battle Cry of Freedom. I will say my most astonishingly favorite part of this book was honestly the explanation of the differing economic models of North (capitalist industrialization) and South (traditionalist agrarianism) and how this split led to political and cultural separation and ultimately war. This by far, to me, was the most fascinating part of the book, and darkly rhymes with the economic, political, and cultural separations of modern day America.
There is not a high enough recommendation for this book I can provide. Read it, please. Learn from history, and see what we can learn today from the most disastrous conflict in America's past.
If you are a history buff with any interest in the American Civil War, I have no choice but to recommend this volume, intimidating in its size as it may be. McPherson covers every conceivably important entity of the war: battles, elections, economic developments, diplomacy, social convention, governance, etc. It's quite possibly ALL here, at least the ideas that are most important to explore.
As an avid military history reader, I was impressed by McPherson's ability to quickly and concisely summarize the many, many battles covered during 4 years of war, some of which I've read whole books about. He does this in a way that leaves the reader with a decent idea of the scale of the battle, casualties, and impacts on the greater conflict, without getting bogged down in the details that would warrant their own dedicated book.
This then leaves him plenty of time to explore the deeper themes of the war, dedicating whole chapters to these concepts: states rights, emancipation, the institution of slavery, cultural differences between the North and South, governance during wartime, the Republican and Democratic parties and their machinations, and on and on, until the reader has no choice but to nearly totally understand the war. All throughout the book, the reader is immersed so completely, it's as if they are there, reading the newspapers as they come in reporting on disaster or success in the field, or flipping through the journals of soldiers and generals after yet another bloody conflict.
Due to the nature of current politics I believe it should be clearly stated that this book, despite being published originally in 1988 during a cultural revival of Confederate sympathy that seems to have only increased since then in the United States in 2023, is no opinionated support volume for the Lost Cause myth or Confederate ideology in general. McPherson seems to be levelheaded and staunchly academic in his study of the Civil War, highlighting the atrocities that slavery wrought on African Americans, of which modern Confederate apologists would rather leave alone or even criticize. Because of the incredible analysis McPherson provides about Northern and Southern societies preceding the war, and the clear and seemingly unbiased way he performs his analysis, I would honestly want this book/audiobook to be required reading for American school children.
There is simply too much for me to go into to fully show my praises for Battle Cry of Freedom. I will say my most astonishingly favorite part of this book was honestly the explanation of the differing economic models of North (capitalist industrialization) and South (traditionalist agrarianism) and how this split led to political and cultural separation and ultimately war. This by far, to me, was the most fascinating part of the book, and darkly rhymes with the economic, political, and cultural separations of modern day America.
There is not a high enough recommendation for this book I can provide. Read it, please. Learn from history, and see what we can learn today from the most disastrous conflict in America's past.