Customer Reviews

Civil War Blunders: Amusing Incidents of the War

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

 

 

This is a collection of vignettes, each usually about 4 or 5 pages in length, concerning mistakes made (usually by Generals) during the U.S. Civil War. Some of these are fairly well-known, such as the Battle of the Crater, when hundreds of Union troops marched into a huge crater created when engineers blew up an ammo dump, only to have Confederate soldiers simply stand on the rim of the crater and fire down on them at point-blank range; while others are stories previously unknown to me. I was unaware that President Lincoln appointed a number of generals from foreign countries, particularly Germany. There were some German generals in the Northern Army who spoke no English. There also seemed to be plenty of drunken generals, according to this book. There seemed to be a special level of incompetence in this war; I guess the drunkards and incompetents were balanced out by the Lees and Grants.

This book was a very interesting one to read. I read it cover to cover in just three days. Some of the stories were hard for me to understand why they were blunders, but many were funny. Some left me shaking my head in awe as to how some things happened. If you want to read the best stories first, read about the men who faught the enemy naked because they were caught off guard. If you're a Civil War buff, you'll find this book interesting.

This is an excellent book with 3 and 4 page stories of Civil War Blunders. Read a chapter here or later. I lent this book to a neighbor who had Cancer of the brain, and was embarrassed to ask his wife for the book after he passed away this Spring. I had a sigh
of relief when I found it for .99 cents on Amazon. It was in mint condition, and I would have bought more for gifts if I had known that. Wonderful stories for presentations to Civil War groups or Senior citizen and Living History talks!
Very Thankful,
P. Kulas
Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War

An excellent read! Many of these little stories are well known but some were new to me, and I have been a student of the ACW for many years. This is not a "scholarly work"; it is for people who like reading a few short essays a day. Good for beginners who want to get a "feel" for what happened from 1861-65 that didn't get into the ordinary texts.

This book is, in short, a disgrace. It is full of factual errors from beginning to end, which is reason enough to avoid it. What is most disturbing, however, are the number of "facts" that the author has simply made up or inferred from circumstantial evidence. Many of the anecdotes in this book deserve to be to told and this could have been done in an interesting and effective way. The idea that history is only "fun" if it is made up, however, really is an abomination. Anyone who reads this will walk away from it believing many things about the most devasting war in U.S. history that simply are not true. Shame on the author and the publisher for ever releasing this book.

It was oh so handy in writing my report, but a little confusing. But, I don't know much about war terms or the Civil War itself, so you may not find it so confusing. It was so funny to read and made my project much more fun!

I enjoyed reading Mr johnson's. He took the civil war and made it kinda funny. whoever said this book was drivel was obviosly mistaken. This book should be considered a classic and will go down as one of the best books written about blunders in the civil war because there are so many books on civil war blunders.

Don't waste your time on this drivel. I felt my brain atrophy as I read this volume of vomitous verbage.