Customer Reviews

The American Civil War: 365 Days

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Margaret E. Wagner, The American Civil War: 365 Days form the Library of Congress (Abrams, 2006)

It took me a very long time to get through this. A good deal of the reason is that the book is, despite its relatively small dimensions, massive; this is not one you'll be carrying with you on your morning commute or reading in the park. You may want to get it a podium of its very own. It's probably worth it.

Wagner selected, as the subtitle tells you, three hundred sixty-five (actually, closer to five hundred; there are a number of small inset pictures, and many pages have more than one picture) photos, handbills, posters, and other ephemera from the Civil War era, and presents them here with some framing text. Actually, "some framing text" is an understatement-- you'll spend as much time reading as you will contemplating photographs, and Wagner's charm is that she spends a good deal of time illuminating dark corners of the war neglected in history books, or shining different lights on them than we're used to seeing. The result is a quite different look at the war than we're used to, and that makes this absorbing and worth reading. Just make sure you have someplace sturdy to set it while doing so. ****

This book was wonderful. I have never been overly interested in the Civil War until reading/looking at this book. The division of the book into topics helped me analyze different general aspects of conflict and concern at the time, and the phenomenal selection of photos, maps, drawings, cartoons humanized the time period and the war itself and made it very real. The book also filled in some historical holes for me: The picture of George Armstrong Custer as a young officer, for example, gave me a sense of Custer as a man, as well as of how the history of the Old West fits together with that of the North and South. I borrowed the book from the library, couldn't put it down, rushed right out and bought it.

The American Civil War: 365 Days provides an excellent pictoral history of the war backed up with a brief written history. I added this to my classroom civil war collection as soon as I saw finished reading it. Recommended.

Very easy to read for someone with a limited amount of time. Excellent information and photos.

The book itself and particularly the illustrations, are incredible, but I found the factoids in parentheses quite distracting from the main text, as they generally weren't related to whatever else was on a particular page or topic.

I was disappointed. I'm fairly well read on the civil war. This was disjointed--hard to see the theme. The technique of placing a day's activity opposite a picture or illustration that had nothing to do with it was weird. Also these "days" did not follow any chronolgy that I could detect.
Might interest someone as a casual first time read on the war.--very superficial.

I'm still enjoying this book, especially at the sale price. The 365 days listed are all over the place, from one year to the other,as each of the important dates are not in any particular order. However, the painting, artwork and details pertaining to the picture on the opposing page are very informative regarding the details surrounding that artwork. It's just too bad that the sequencing of dates,(at the bottom of the page) is all over the place. A heavy book, but I believe has a lot to offer.

I bought this book a couple years ago. I am a History Major focusing on US History. I love the pictures in this book and it does give good information. Unfortunately the information doesn't match with the pictures and it jumps all over the place. Still one of my favorite books about the Civil War entirely because of the pictures.

Even though this is not a favorite of mine, I had to give 4 stars for its informative and has many good photos. My main interest is the military aspects of the war and Ms Wagner has diluted that part with an equal amount on civilian life of the times. That's not a criticism, just an observation. There are many bios of leading personalities as well as the "common folk" which will interest many people and help give a feel for the times.

Ms Wagner has a format that is unusual and for me made it more difficult to follow the battle action on a "real time basis". The entries are not sorted by date in the traditional layout of a Chronology. The book is sorted by day of the month then by year. In other words you could have and entry for year 1861 next to an entry for 1863 with both having a day of February 19th. There are some dates without an entry. There is a lot of info in this book but it may be hard to fine if you don't know the day of the month it occurred. This book is more for browsing than for a critical study of the war.

I gave this to my dad for father's day and he LOVED it!
I'd say this one is a winner ;-)