Customer Reviews

Battling for Manassas: The Fifty-Year Preservation Struggle at Manassas National Battlefield Park

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In his introduction to Battling for Manassas, former NPS historian Ed Bearss correctly notes that this book ought to be "must reading" for public officials, developers, and preservationists who will eventually find themselves on opposite sides of debates about the preservation of land for historic sites, especially controversies that affect land near the nation's battlefields. Joan Zenzen has done a fine job of researching and writing this administrative history of Manassas National Battlefield Park. She has not only made sense of the paper records that flourish luxuriantly around government agencies, but she has also interviewed key players on both sides of the more recent of the many controversies that have swirled around the park. Zenzen's prose is serviceable if unexciting. A heavier editorial hand might have reduced the number of awkward phrasings and passive voices. Still, in literary style it ranks in the top five percent of National Park Service administrative histories, a notoriously pedestrian genre. A more serious criticism is that the book does not compare the land-use controversies at Manassas with those at other American historic sites, at least beyond limited analogies to Gettysburg and Fredericksburg/Spotsylvania. Perhaps that is just as well. Because it lies just outside the Beltway in an area inhabited by the rich, famous, and the politically potent, Manassas is hardly a reliable model for what might happen in similar circumstances at other American battlefields.

Although this book feels a little dated now and could use an update, it is still a must have for preservationists who are interested in the struggles that revolved around this battlefield.

The current price (as of 6/06) of $41 is a little steep for a book of this kind. If you can get beyond the price, this is a quick read. Even at well over 200 pages, it's so interesting that I could hardly put it down and zipped right through it.

Anyone familiar with the Civil War Preservation Trust would surely want to read a book from them in a similar vein as this one. I'm sure they have tons of stories to tell.