Customer Reviews

Great Battles of the Civil War

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I am a beginner on my own personal odyssey of understanding and memorialization of those valiant souls who fought and died so bravely in the American Civil War. My interest in this Great War was awakened by the emotionally overwhelming movie Gettysburg. To understand Gettysburg and place it in a larger historical context I began reading reviews of various Civil War books on Amazon and other Internet sites. I discovered this book while browsing the Civil War section at my local Borders Bookstore. I was struck by the clarity of its visual presentation and found its graphic depictions of the number of troops and casualties involved in each battle to be extremely helpful in grasping the enormous carnage of the Civil War. I bought this book knowing the luke warm reviews found here. I did this because I believe it provides a visually rich entry point for Civil War novices such as myself and suspect its deficiencies will be corrected by future readings. One thing I've learned about the Civil War is that the fog of battle has not cleared after 136 years and almost everything I think I know about this Great War is open to honest scholarly debate. This book would be a good choice for one of your first Civil War books, but it certainly should not be your last.

The book contains all of the major battles which took place during the civil, with good information like location of battle, how it was fought, casualties, etc. The book contained illustrations of the battles which were very well done, along with information on whats taking place in the illustrations. I think it is a good book to refer to if you want some basic information on the major battles of the civil war. The other reviewers were probably just being a bit too over critical when they typed their review. If you liked this book, then you should check into Great battles of world war II, its one of my favorites!

From the looks of the cover one would think there would be a great amount of detail and research within these pages. However, upon reading it you will be taken for a loss and need to refer back to the Official Records or State Regimental records.

There are too many errors to list, and the 3-D terrain effect is not very helpful, but the historical snapshots are nice.

I would agree generally with those who sight shortcoming in the technology and the the explanation and add that they are confusing.
Everyone is always trying to write a better description of Civil War battles, this may have some new ideas but many did not work very well.

I found this book to have numerous inaccuracies which I find unacceptable. The author simply makes statements that are not true. I did not find the computer generated maps all that helpful; however, the book did contain some nice photographs.