Customer Reviews

Commanding Voices of Blue & Gray: General William T. Sherman, General George Custer, General James Longstreet, & Major J.S. Mosby, Among Others, in Their Own Words

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Absolutely wonderful book. Commanding Voices is a compilation of speeches, memoirs, and personal recollections made personally by major Civil War figures. Each section is stands alone and can be read by itself, but the sections are arranged chronologically, so that if you read the book front to back, you'll get a first-hand view of the Civil War in proper order.

This book is not meant to be any kind of novel or narrative reading. It's strictly a compilation of speeches and (partial) memoirs. They're nicely arranged, of course, and you end up with a sense of satisfaction after you've finished, but don't expect there to be a "introduction, conflict, plot, and climax." This is not a historical fiction novel.

The speeches and memoirs themselves are first rate, and some are downright entertaining. The book begins with Lincoln's Address to Congress before the Civil War and proceeds from there. Major points in the Civil War are taken from major characters involved.

A wonderful book all around. Highly recommended.

When I started reading "Commanding Voices Of Blue And Grey" By Brian M. Thomson, I'll admit I wasn't exactly thrilled to read it, but after a while it started to grow on me. The book was kind of hard to read because it wasn't in a story format like I'm used to. This book didn't really have a main character through the whole book, and it was kind of like a textbook, except much more interesting. Brian M. Thomson did a terrific job turning the experiences of different people that served in the civil war into short story like scenes. This book had some good battle scenes and some very important people that turned the tide in the war. This book was extremely good about showing both sides of the story. This book helped me completely understand the civil war and it was also surprisingly good.