Customer Reviews

Blue & Grey in Black & White: Newspapers in the Civil War

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From the Washington Times (October 2, 1999) "Mr. Harris' book is a compelling account of how the Civil War led to the emergence of the press as a power on the national scene. It gives fresh insight into how a cast of visionaries and tough reporters -- along with some rogues and crackpots -- used that power to shape the way the nation viewed the war the and for all time . . . .This book is the first full treatment of the subject of press coverage of the Civil War since a pair of books by J. Cutler Andrews nearly two generations ago . . . Readers may be distracted by some of the author's digressions . . . [but] the value of "Blue and Gray in Black and White" outweighs any quibbles. . . . Journalism is viewed as the disposable first draft of history. What Mr. Harris' book makes clear is that taken as a whole, the work of combat correspondents created a record of the war that has formed our perceptions and fueled our imaginations ever since." --

From the Kansas City Star Magazine, (October 10, 1999) "The love-hate relationship between the newspapers and the men who fought in the Civil War is just one of the subjects of Brayton Harris' Blue & Gray in Black & White: Newspapers in the Civil War . . . [In an interview, Harris said] "Before the Civil War, the newspapers in the United States were primarily opinion sheets for their editors. By the end of the war, they had actually become newspapers in the way we know them today. . . .One thing that came through is that nothing really has changed except technology . . . the media works the same way today that they did in 1860. Reporters do the same dumb, or brilliant things. Publishers sometimes put profits above ethics then and they do now.'"

I enjoy books about the Civil War. This was a great way to learn about the war from the people who were watching it. Nowdays, we have wars such as the Gulf War on television. Here were the folks who HAD to be your eyes and ears. This would be a great book to have high school classes read as a comparison to seeing a film about Vietnam or Desert Storm, just to see the contrasts. History classes in American History and Journalism would also benefit. For the general public, unless you are interested in these topics, it is a lot of detail to absorb.