Citizen Sherman:: A Life of William Tecumseh Sherman (Modern War Studies) [Hardcover]

Michael Fellman (Author)

Book Description

Series: Modern War Studies | Publication Date: July 10, 1995

Bright, compulsively articulate, famous, loved, hated, and deeply troubled, William T. Sherman was perhaps one of the most compelling personalities in American history. This groundbreaking, in-depth portrait of this significant Civil War figure reveals much about Sherman--and about the concept of manliness in his culture. 8 pages of photos.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This is a study of William T. Sherman as a human being rather than a soldier. Fellman, who teaches history at Simon Fraser Univ., in Canada, utilizes Sherman's extensive correspondence to depict a man driven by anger. A frustrating childhood and an unhappy marriage, a foundered career in the pre-Civil War army and a succession of business failures left Sherman a seething cauldron of hostility that he unleashed on the South during the war. Yet Sherman's will kept his emotions in check most of the time. His harrowing of the Confederacy was a means to end a war he wished to be followed by a peace of reconciliation?albeit at the expense of blacks, whom Sherman detested. Postwar fame modified his contentiousness, but only in old age did he mellow significantly. Sherman's life and career highlight the fact that relationships between aggression and achievement are complex and often symbiotic. Photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Those readers familiar with the life and career of William Tecumseh Sherman know he was rarely a happy person. When he was nine, Sherman's widowed, destitute mother "farmed" him out to be the ward of the prosperous Ewing family; Sherman never fully warmed to his foster father, and he nursed a sense of rejection and alienation all his life. Like his mentor, U. S. Grant, Sherman endured the shame of business failure as a civilian before the war, and he remained subject to periodic bouts of severe anxiety and depression. Although his marriage endured the strains of prolonged physical separations, Sherman's feelings toward his wife (who was also his foster sister) ranged from irrational resentment to an abject sense of inadequacy for failing to meet her emotional and sometimes financial needs. In tracing his subject's life, Fellman is moving over well-traveled ground. However, his probing into Sherman's deeper motivations and feelings makes for fascinating reading and speculation. If Fellman seems alternately entranced and repelled by Sherman's actions and personality traits, it seems a natural reaction to one of our most enigmatic and frustrating military figures. Jay Freeman

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 486 pages
• Publisher: Random House; 1st edition (July 10, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0679429662
• ISBN-13: 978-0679429661
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.1 x 1.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,117,245 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Psychobiography at its best, January 20, 2001

By 

Candace Scott (Lake Arrowhead, CA, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Citizen Sherman: A Life of William Tecumseh Sherman (Modern War Studies) (Paperback)

I usually loathe any historical book which puts its subject on the couch, but this is a notable exception. Fellman infuses this book with his own spin on certain matters, but much of the interpretation is accurate! If you enjoy a "National Enquirer" approach to biography, then this is your bag, though a more intellectual, sobering and accurate analysis of events than a tabloid rag. Fellman delves deeply into Sherman's womanizing and the reasons behind it: Ellen, WTS's wife, was a passionless prig, obsessed with Catholicism and being the type of prim, straightlaced wife that Sherman would ultimately abhor. Can we blame him for repeatedly cheating on Ellen? Of course not.

Fellman is much weaker on the military end of the biography and his limitations show. There are numerous factual gaffes and the author is on safer ground when restricting himself to purely personal matters. This is hardly the definitive treatment of Sherman, try John Marszalek's biography (available on Amazon) for an exceptional and scholarly approach. But if you want a book focused primarily on the private life of Sherman, this nicely fits the bill

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars an enjoyable read left me wanting for more info, May 31, 2003

By 

"ufkin2" (Chicago, IL United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Citizen Sherman:: A Life of William Tecumseh Sherman (Modern War Studies) (Hardcover)

Some of the above reviews have merit, Fellman definitely puts Sherman on the couch, and, I also don't usually like this, as it takes some liberties that may not be entirely correct. However, it will take more than one source on Sherman to help the reader draw their own conclusions about the man. This said, I very much enjoyed reading Fellman's analysis. I did find it light militarily, however, I really wasn't looking for that kind of bio on Sherman. A history teacher, this was my first exposure to "Cumpy" the man, as opposed to military commander. I found myself wanting to research him more as a result of reading this book, as I feel it inspired me to learn more about him. There is an implication here that the book did not tell me everything I needed to know, but, as stated above, I found myself not really minding as I enjoyed Fellman's ease with words and the simplicity of the smooth flowing text. Therefore, I didn't critique it so much for being a bit on the lighter side of research work. I found that I would need to consult other sources for more information anyway. Having read Grant's bio and Foote's Civil War trilogy, I found this to be a good introduction to Sherman as an individual, especially after hearing Grant's praise of the man in his own work. I'm interested to read Sherman's own book after reading Citizen Sherman, can compare some of Fellman's analysis with Sherman's own. I very much enjoyed the section on Sherman's women, and the way that the text was oriented less chronologically than in the different departments of Sherman's life.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Beautifully written, excessive psychoanalysis, November 6, 2006

By 

Dennis Brandt (Red Lion, PA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Citizen Sherman:: A Life of William Tecumseh Sherman (Modern War Studies) (Hardcover)

Fellman's prose is dynamic and his knowledge of the events of Sherman's life is apparently up to the task, but his psychoanalysis is overblown. Sherman's psychological problems clearly must be discussed and psychohistory is valid within limits, but almost all of Fellman's paragraphs drip with analysis of what Sherman or Ellen was thinking, why they thought or said it, and, worse, what they might have said but didn't. One example: Sherman hated newspapermen, claiming, with a degree of truth, the military is chained to a rock while reporters were vultures that flew freely. Fellman claims, "Sherman fancied himself the modern Prometheus, the vulture-tortured embodiment of truthful duty." The mere presence of a rock and vultures, frequently used analogies, does not by definition constitute a paranoic self-vision. Fellman paints an ugly picture of W. T. Sherman that smacks of late 20th century attitudes. If you consider Fellman's approach to be valid, ask youself why a used hardback version only costs $1.39 while a used hardcover of Isaac Robertson's Stonewall Jackson bio starts at $19.30. I want to read one of his competitors' works.