23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A study of terrible battle in its rightful context, November 24, 2002
This review is from: Fredericksburg! Fredericksburg! (Hardcover)
George C. Rable explains in his prologue that he sought a blending of what he characterizes the "old" military history (dealing largely with leaders and dissecting strategy and tactics) and the "new" (focused on soldier life and its connections to larger social themes). And, I think it is fair to say, he well achieved that blending in "Fredericksburg! Fredericksburg!" Combat operations are competently described, albeit not in deep detail. Where Rable excels is in providing what might be called the "context" of the campaign, including discussions of the impact of McClellan's replacement by Burnside, the continuing controversy over the planned formal issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation, the repercussions of recently conducted state and congressional elections, and the realities of army life in the field. And Rable delves deeply into the experiences of the wounded after the fighting ended and into how the battle was reported, both North and South. For the most part, there is little assessment regarding the performances of the generals on the battlefield; Rable's interests quite evidently focus more upon the lot of the common soldier. Despite the relative lack of emphasis on the tactical operations, the maps are entirely adequate to support the narrative.
Only a few months after Rable's book appeared, Frank Augustin O'Reilly published "The Fredericksburg Campaign". Inevitably, a comparison between the two must be made. O'Reilly has written a detailed military history, down to the regiment and battery level, laying out precisely the what, where, and when of combat operations. Fully 60 percent of his 500-plus page text is devoted to the action of December 13, 1862. This is not, however, a merely dry recounting of maneuver and sequence; O'Reilly takes care to maintain the vitality of his narrative by addressing the experiences and fates of individual officers and soldiers caught up in the fighting. All in all, however, O'Reilly's book is focused much more narrowly than Rable's, paying less heed to the general background of politics and the state of Northern and Southern morale at this stage of the war.
Of the two volumes, Rable's "Fredericksburg! Fredericksburg!" is probably the more accessible by the general reader not deeply into the study of American Civil War military operations, while O'Reilly's book is clearly the definitive traditional military history of the Fredericksburg battle in the traditional sense. Paired with Rable's work, the two together provide a uniquely comprehensive study of the campaign in all its multitude of aspects. I recommend reading both.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
22 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent synthesis, February 24, 2003
This review is from: Fredericksburg! Fredericksburg! (Hardcover)
On Dec. 13, 1862, the South won perhaps the most lopsided major battle of the Civil War, in back of the Virginia city of Fredericksburg. Robert E. Lee's rebel army dug in behind a stone wall at the top of a long, steep ridge. His northern counterpart sent blue brigade after blue brigade right up that hill in the cold winter sunlight, in the face of the kind of gunfire that men lean into, as they do a wind-driven hail. By the time sunset stopped the carnage, the North had lost nearly 13,000 men.
The battle became a watchword, not just for Yankee defeat but for the folly of sending troops on long charges against dug-in enemies. Six months later, when Union troops along Cemetery Ridge poured a deadly fire into Pickett's Charge, they shouted to one another, "Give them Fredericksburg! Fredericksburg!"
Thus the title of George Rable's new look at the battle. In this book, he's written an excellent and gripping description of the bravery and folly and just plain cussedness of one battle, and all war. But more than that, he's tried to bridge a schism that's often as rancorous as the North-South political divorce of 1860.
Look at any bookstore's shelf of Civil War titles and you'll likely notice they come in two varieties: the "battles and leaders" books, and the "social history" books. This bedevils our understanding of the times. The academics write slim volumes on social theory, and look on enviously as tacticians and retired military men rack up sales for vast books on every battlefield detail. To a professor, it's positively baffling.
James McPherson, the dean of Civil War history, in his provocative essay "What's the Matter With History?" (1995) described these cinder block-sized books as "more and more about less and less" and marveled that there are "two volumes by a single author on the second day (of the Battle of Gettysburg) totaling 725 pages. Only the most dedicated buff can wade through all of this prose."
But if Harry Pfanz's books seem to stop at the edge of the battlefield, as though the battle were a planet unto itself, the books of McPherson's colleagues often stop on the other side of it. They can write as though the least important thing about the war was -- the war. Most Civil War buffs seem to prefer the Pfanz version. It's hard to blame them. Arid socialistic moralizing and preachy rhetoric on the one hand, on the other, timeless tales of the bravery of average men wrapped in sumptuous prose. Yet the Douglas Southall Freemans are dead. And the present retreat from social history tends toward military minutiae and has become arid in its own way. Without a context, nothing is comprehensible. I remember watching a Civil War roundtable meeting let out, after an hour-long presentation about the Battle of Antietam, and one wife turned to another and muttered, "All that over a cornfield."
Rable, writing from the academic side, sets this all right with his Fredericksburg book, and he lays out a map for other scholars to follow. He is a history professor at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa whose previous books include "The Confederate Republic," which was an interesting political look at the Southern government. He also wrote "A Revolution against Politics and Civil Wars: Women and the Crisis of Southern Nationalism," which is the kind of title professors love and Civil War buffs avoid.
The Fredericksburg book shows he can walk with the best of the military historians. He clearly explains the battle's troop movements, with the aid of many diagrams. Rable has an eye for the best anecdotes from a raft of first-hand sources, and they spice up his narrative in the best Bruce Catton style. He delves into the strategy and tactics, for fans of that. But he also explores army morale and the conditions of camp life, which can have as much effect on a battle's outcome as a commander's decisions.
And he sets this terrible battle in the context of two peoples at war in the same land. Civilians, soldiers' wives, politicians, blacks slave and free -- he's got them all in here.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
21 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Comprehensive somewhat but not definitive, August 14, 2002
By A Customer
This review is from: Fredericksburg! Fredericksburg! (Hardcover)
Rable's new book will be the darling of academic historians because it is a model of "New Military History" (at least this is one accepted term for it), the relatively recent school of thought that places military conflicts in the context of broad cultural issues such as politics, society, race, and gender. What is downplayed is the importance of strategic and tactical detail of the battle itself. A book about the battle of Fredericksburg can in no way be definitive if the details of the battle itself cover only 92 some odd pages out of a total of 450+ text (non- endnotes, index, etc) pages. It was a BATTLE after all!. The problem with NMH is it requires everything about the CW to be placed in such broad context that a book on a large CW battle would easily run over 1500 pages if you give proper treatment to all of its tenets. I don't see what is wrong with one book on a CW battle being an ultra-detailed tactical battle study with little addressing of social issues while other books cover the other issues such as hospitals, civilians, race, causes, politics, etc etc etc. There is simply no reason was all this must be examined in detail in a single volume. It simply cannot be done in the size of a book that most editors will accept. Invariably, it is the battle details that lose out when something must be cut.
Anyway, this does not detract from the fine book that Mr. Rable has written. I give it only 3 stars (which is a positive rating--I would like to give it 3 1/2) because the author failed in my opinion to render an adequate modern tactical treatment of the battle equal in importance to the other issues tackled in the book. My rating may appear at first glance to be doing to Rable's book what I accuse academic historians of doing to tactical studies, but it is grounded in Rable's failure in his own goal of providing a comprehensive treatment of the battle. The military issue is too thin.
Another book on Fredericksburg will available soon that is a lengthy tome covering the fighting in fine detail. Undoubtedly, it will be roundly criticized for doing so but all I have to say to that is why must it compete with Rable??? Their focuses perfectly complement each other and together we come to a higher understanding that we do not get from reading each in absence of the other. This is how it should be.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
