Customer Reviews

On Many a Bloody Field: Four Years in the Iron Brigade

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

 

 

The author has woven an impressive mass of research into a compelling narrative as he traces a company of the 19th Indiana Infantry from their recruitment, to their return home (with less than 10% of their original members).
It is a mark of Gaff's skill that the reader is drawn into this brave company, sharing their hardships and joys, feeling some of the terror of combat, and finally coming to know a little of the bond of warriors.
This is history writing at its best, and sets a new standard for "unit history". Alas the same cannot be said of the maps, which are perfunctory and not keyed to the text.

(The numerical rating above is a default setting within Amazon's format. This reviewer does not employ numerical ratings.)

This is a thoroughly researched and carefully written book for serious students of the Civil War and the Iron Brigade. Has details and insights not available in other books. The reader can get a good sense of life in the Civil War military.

On Many a Bloody Field by Alan Gaff is one of the best contemporary accounts of what the Civil War meant to the soldiers in the field. The book is a close look at the experiences of the soldiers in the famous Iron Brigade and is focused on one company of the Indiana regiment which served with the brigade. Gaff expertly portrays what the soldiers felt, what they did to combat the loneliness, discouragement and terror of war. He has successfully described the emotions of these brave men who signed up to save the Union and who were sorely used by the US government and the Army administration. Most Civil War histories are mired down by broad spectrum "movements" and social and political events of the time with little attention to what the small picture is. But this amazing history manages to give the reader details of these important events as well as a close-up portrait of the men who were actually involved in the famous battles of Antietam and Gettysburg, Wilderness and Petersburg. I would recommend this book to anyone who desires to learn about the soldier experience and about what the nation really experienced during the Civil War. I have added this book to my class reading requirements for the fall semester and I predict that it will become a classic account of the soldier experience. Mr. Gaff is to be congratulated

The story of the famous Iron Brigade has been told many times before, rarely, however, with this kind of obsessive detail. Alan Gaff's highly subjective style of writing focuses on minutiae, often at the expense of topics larger than what the soldiers ate for breakfast. Much is made of the trivia found in quatermasters records and battle descriptions are abridged versions of those to be found in "Battles and Leaders of the Civil War." Overall, the book is marked by a tedious accretion of detail with overwrought writing and dubious attribution of sentiments. Not the worst book on the Iron Brigade surely, but not the best read either.

An outstanding book

Boring and submerged in minutia. I looked forward to a good read such as Mr. Gaff's "Brave Mens Tears", but instead felt I was reading a dictionary. Don't get me wrong, the book was well documented for historians, but a sluggish read.