Customer Reviews

Don't Know Much About the Civil War: Everything You Need to Know About America's Greatest Conflict but Never Learned

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(14)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

Davis's prose is entertaining and brings the era to life with excerpts from diaries and letters of the period. However, the factual errors in the book are very distracting. I am by no means a Civil War historian, but without looking for them, I discovered at least 5 egregious factual errors in the book. (Page numbers refer to the 2001 paperback edition published by Perennial.)

1. (p. 78) "...President Jackson recognized the independence of Texas in 1836, on his last day in office." Since the Presidential election was in 1836, Jackson's last day in office was in 1837. He recognized the independence of Texas in March of 1837.
2. (p. 113) "His (President Pierce) Cabinet includes War Secretary Jefferson Davis ... a former senator from South Carolina." Jefferson Davis was a senator from Mississippi.
3. (p. 139) "On December 20, 1865, a special convention met in Charleston, and South Carolina became the first state to leave the Union." 1865???
4. (p. 275) Referring to the Emancipation Proclamation: "Lincoln's proclamation, announced the previous July after Antietam..." Antietam was fought on September 17, 1862. If the Emancipation Proclamation was announced AFTER Antietam, it wasn't announced in July, and if it was announced in JULY, it wasn't announced after Antietam. The text was actually published on September 23, 1862.
5. (p. 364) "Arkansas, a slaveholding state that remained in the Union, adopts a new antislavery constitution." Arkansas did NOT remain in the Union. It seceded on May 6, 1861.

A book so crammed with facts is bound to contain misstatements and typos, but a dedicated author and a conscientious editor should have caught these very obvious errors.

For anyone wanting a basic education about the American Civil War, either as an educational requirement or as perhaps a lifetime hobby of interest, this is the perfect place to start. Author Davis covers every aspect of this great confrontation (except one) from the real reasons it was fought to how it came to its conclusion. There are thumbnail sketches of most of the participants on both sides, some in great detail; all of the major battles are incorporated, including the strategies and reasons for their outcome; myths are busted (no, Lincoln did not write the Gettysburg Address on an envelope); heroes and cowards receive their just desserts. My only complaint: Not one map. How can you write a history book without maps? How can your write a book about war without battlefield sketches? The book is presented chronologically in an expanded outline form, with questions asked and then answers given, making this an easy tome to return to and find quick information about specific topics. The index is equally complete in listing names and places. There is a terrific appendix giving complete documentation on such important aspects as The Emancipation Proclamation, The Dred Scott decision, Amendments to the Constitution, and much more. Even with all this detail, the book is very readable. Within this book, a person could find a narrow scope that intrigues and can lead to further exploration, whether it is Andersonville, The Underground Railroad, Gideon Welles, or the burning of Atlanta. To aid in this exploration, there is a 16-page bibliography that, in addition to title information, describes briefly what area each book covers. This is a treasure trove. But, bring your own maps.

I listened to this book on tape and enjoyed it overall. I confess, I had some issues as I listened to the book as I am apparently in that class of people who actually does enjoy and study history. I found the anecdotes entertaining and overall found the book appropriate for its purpose as a primer for a majority of the populace who apparently doesn't have even a cursory grasp of the keystone event in American History. It does have a tendency however to oversimplify some of the issues in an apparent effort to create a framework to understand not only the events, but their socio-economic-political implications.

You have only to read the other reviews of this work for evidence that many of the philosophical and political battles of the civil war are still being fought in American Society.

Most criticism of this work seems to be directed at Davis' contention that slavery was the issue of the Civil War. Davis does go to great lengths to make this point. It is by no means a slam dunk as there are many reputable historians who downplay this claim as an over-simplification.

However, Davis is not writing this book as a competitor or replacement for the weighty works of academia that address this question. Davis is writing to a more general audience that he appears to perceive as attempting to sluff over or bypass this issue from the civil way, perhaps in some effort to minimize or bypass the issues of racism and civil rights inequities today.

In those terms, Davis seems to be going to great lengths to address the issue in order to convince them that:

1. Slavery is not a new issue.
2. Slavery was integrally entwined within many of the issues cited then and since for the Civil War.

States rights were an issue? Of course they were! What were the states primarily asserting their rights to control that they believed the North and then Lincoln were threatening? Slavery was primary in this regard.

Were taxes and tariffs tied into the argument. Yes it was. What were the taxes and tariffs centered around? Issues related to the agricultural South and the industrial North who preferred to see these applied to the others and not themselves. What drove the southern agricultural system and undergirded it in the context of the times? Was it state's rights? Yes, but primarily as those state's rights applied to slavery!

Are detractors correct when they claim that many who fought the war from the North were equally racist and had no real desire to benefit negro slaves? Yes, that is undeniably true. Were there many who fought on the Southern side who did not own slaves and would have been just as happy to see slavery ended? Absolutely.

The truth of the matter is, however, that slavery as a political issue was inextrably in the weave of all the issues leading up to Lincoln's election and succession.

In this regard, maybe Davis is overstating and oversimplifying things from the point of view of anyone who is already familiar with the events of and surrounding the civil war. The point to be made, is perhaps he needs to do this with his intended audience of neophytes and newcomers who need to be slapped in the face with it to dispel the opposite error which seems to have diminished the role of slavery and then civil rights development within the US.

That said, if you have questions after reading or listening to this book, then you'll at least have a platform from which to do further research.

So, I recommend this book. It does what it sets out to do which is to introduce people with little or no historical background not only into the events of the Civil War, but the political and societal context of it.

In order to do that you have to take a stand and make a case for what you are saying. Like it or not; agree with it or not; Davis does just that and he does a credible job.

Those criticizing it on that basis are beyond the purpose of the book and for whatever reasons still fighting the original battles.

Better here than on the battlefield!

Read it. Learn. Then move on and question the premises in additional reading after this fine introduction.

This book was an easy and captivating read. However, I felt that the author used a bit too much of his energy trying to convince the reader that slavery was wrong. WHO is he trying to convince? People who think that slavery is a good idea certainly do not have the mental capacity to read comics, let alone a book, so I felt that my intelligence was a bit slighted. It WAS a bit interesting to see how many synonyms for HORRIBLE that he could come up with. Overall, I did learn many things that I had never known, especially about slavery and pre-war America, so I would recommend this book. I find that there are many things that I didn't learn in school, and I suspect it's the same for alot of people, so Mr. Davis's books are a great (and welcome) idea! I just hope that people read more than this one book (ANY one book) before they decide that they DO know something about the Civil War.

Kenneth Davis' book's question/answer style format makes this book easy to read and very informative. Unfortunately, many of his enteries do not readily answer the questions he poses and, what's more, he leaves the reader feeling talked down to. This book has its purpose though: I found the format and the concise entries useful when touring civil war sites. But, if you want to know everything you "need to know about America's greatest conflict," you won't get it here. It's a good starter book to introduce the topic, but from here, McPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom of Foote's trilogy on the Civil War are much needed.

This book is so full of egregious factual blunders (e.g., "Arkansas [was] a slaveholding state that remained in the Union") as to be totally worthless. It is also replete with simplistic and just plain wrong interpretations. The only positive thing to be said about this bomb is that the title is a true reflection of the author's level of knowledge of the subject. One star it too many, but there was no lower number for me to choose.

I'm not a Civil War History maven. I read this book because I thought that my knowledge of the Civil War was superficial at best, and I needed a context for the "microhistories" of individual battles or specific historical characters. Davis does an admirable job of putting the War into its proper perspective, tracing causes back to the settlement of the colonies, and repercussions up to the present. Frequent use of quotes from contemporary speeches, diaries, and writings give both sides of the struggle an eloquence and sense of national tragedy that I had not experienced before. Don't expect a detailed tactical account of individual battles, though Davis did manage to weave in enough of the military minutia to satisfy me. As in his "Don't Know Much About History" he surfaces fantastic facts and coincidences that I love, like the fact that Lincoln's son was present at the assasination of both Garfield and McKinley. Wonder what modern conspiracy theorist would have made of that

I thought I would learn more secrets from this book but I was a little disappointed.
If you are looking for exotic opinions or comments about how and why things went the way it was you do not find much in this book. Dispersed into book are some memories from people involved at every walks of life which makes book a little more interesting than others. In every chapter there is a chronology of events that took place and laws that congress passed. Still looking for a better book that provides commentary rather than chronology of events.

I have been studying and reading about the Civil War for over 40 years, and yet I learned much from reading this book. Usually I shy away from reading overviews of the war as I find them repetitive. Instead I now read the diaries, journals and letters of the active participants. So I was pleasantly surprised to find that the author does an excellent job of explaining the politics and causes of the war without talking down to you with cutsy language as the "... for Dummies" series does. This is the text that should be used in our schools as an introduction to the most significant event in our history. The material is easy to read for the person new to the War and presented in such a manner that most readers probably will want to know more and begin to read other works on the Civil War. I now give this book as a gift to my friends and relatives.

Excellent book giving a thorough background in a sequential format. This proved to open portions of my thought process that had not been explored. I would highly recommend this book for anyone interested in obtaining information that has been cross referenced by the author.