Never Call Retreat [Hardcover]

Bruce Catton (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0848812662 | ISBN-13: 978-0848812669 | Publication Date: December 1976

"...one of the great historical accomplishments of our time...will have an enduring place in our national records."--New York Times.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Bruce Catton was born in 1899. As a child living in a small town in Michigan, Catton was stimulated by the reminiscences of the Civil War that he heard from local veterans. His education at Oberlin College, Ohio, was interrupted by two years of naval service in World War I and was subsequently abandoned for a career in journalism. While he was employed as a reporter for the Boston American, the Cleveland News, and the Cleveland Plain Dealer (1920-26), Catton continued his lifelong study of the Civil War period. He subsequently worked for the Newspaper Enterprise Service (1926-41) and for the U.S. War Production Board. In 1954 he became a member of the staff of American Heritage magazine, and from 1959 he served as its senior editor. A commission to write a Centennial History of the Civil War evolved into Catton's celebrated trilogy on the Army of the Potomac. Catton's brilliance as a historian lay in his ability to bring to historical narrative the immediacy of reportage. He died in 1978. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover
• Publisher: Amereon Limited (December 1976)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0848812662
• ISBN-13: 978-0848812669
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.6 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,079,875 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Catton worthy of his subject matter, September 25, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Never Call Retreat (Hardcover)

The third book in Catton's centennial trilogy of the Civil War, "Never Call Retreat" is a moving account of the war from Fredericksburg (Dec 1862) until the end of the war.

Catton does not devote the amount of ink to events that Shelby Foote did in his trilogy, for example, but Catton more than compensates by his beautiful writing style. As a work of literature, if nothing else, "Never Call Retreat" is worth the read.

But there is more. Because of his eloquence, and his passion for the subject, Catton has produced an account truly worthy of the poignant subject matter. If the reader does not weep as Catton describes Lincoln's assassination, or Stonewall Jackson's death, then he cannot be moved to tears by written words.

Catton portrays the war as a living organism, which, like Frankenstein's monster, got loose from its creators, and almost pulled the house down with it.

Catton's centennial trilogy ("Coming Fury," "Terrible Swift Sword," "Never Call Retreat") is an admirable place for the average person to begin a study of the Civil War.

Because of its poetic qualities, however, it is also a must read for the professional historian. All too often, historians have no heart in their writing. Perhaps a good dose of Catton might cure thatŠ

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars From Fredericksburg to Appomattox, October 23, 2002

By 

Richard M. Affleck (Lake Hopatcong, NJ USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Never Call Retreat (American Civil War Trilogy, Vol. 3) (Paperback)

In "Never Call Retreat", the third volume of his Centennial History of the Civil War, Bruce Catton writes of the last two years of that horrendous conflict. As he did in his first two volumes in the Centennial triology, Catton effectively covers the social and political aspects of the war, as well as the military. A work of this scope is, of necessity, a top-down view of the Civil War, focussing on the principal commanders and their subordinates. Yet, Catton is able to impart to his readers the confusion of battle; we can almost smell the powder smoke and hear the racket of musketry. As always, he writes with an elegance and an eloquence that many historians aspire to, but most cannot hope to match. Catton never loses sight of the war's ultimate, and higher, purpose and he poignantly brings home to us the human cost of our bloodiest conflict. Perhaps nowhere is this sense of loss brought home more forcefully than in this passage about Lincoln's assassination:

"No one will ever know what Abraham Lincoln would have done--with Stanton's scheme for military government, with radicals like Wade and Sumner and Stevens, with any of the separate aspects of the intricate problem that lay ahead--because it was at this delicate moment (about half-past ten on the night of April 14) that Booth came on stage with his derringer. Booth pulled the trigger, and the mind that held somewhere in cloudy solution the elements that might some day have crystallized into an answer for the nation's most profound riddle disintegrated under the impact of a one-ounce pellet of lead: the heaviest bullet, all things considered, ever fired in America. Thinking to destroy a tyrant, Booth managed to destroy a man who was trying to create a broader freedom for all men; with him, he destroyed also the chance for a transcendent peace without malice and with charity for all. Over the years, many people paid a high price for this moment of violence".

Four decades after its publication, this book, and the two that precede it, still stands as one of the best introductions to the war that defines us to this day.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Hated to see it end..., March 28, 2008

By 

Cynthia K. Robertson (beverly, new jersey USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Never Call Retreat (American Civil War Trilogy, Vol. 3) (Paperback)

My husband received Bruce Catton's American Civil War Trilogy as a gift and he said that he didn't want to see it end. After finishing Volume 3, Never Call Retreat, I agree with him completely. I can understand why it remains so popular almost 50 years from when it was first published. The Civil War trilogy is a scholarly work, but reads more like a novel.

Never Call Retreat starts after the Battle of Antietam (Sharpsburg) and the author will take us through some of the most momentous events to take place during the Civil War including the Emancipation Proclamation, the Battle of Gettysburg, the fall of Vicksburg, the siege of Charleston, the presidential election of 1864, Sherman's March to the Sea, the surrender at Appomattox, and Lincoln's death. He also shows how even before the war was over, Lincoln was debating reconstruction and how the Confederate states could best be reunited with the Union. But it's the additional information that Catton provides that makes these books so interesting. He tells us about the deficiencies of the southern railroads and how that handicapped the Confederacy. He relates how the Union and the Confederates still traded goods (especially cotton) despite being at war. He gives examples of how military technology was more advanced than the soldiers using it. All of these different facets provide a more in-depth understanding of the war.

Where Catton is especially talented is in analyzing the characters he writes about. In book one, Lincoln begins to stumble through his presidency. By book three, his genius shows through and he is in commanded of everything from his cabinet to the military. Catton also is a good judge of military leadership. Lee and Grant were brilliant, but many of the officers on both sides were uninspired, reticent and lacking in military skills. In Never Call Retreat, the Confederates are especially plagued by poor leadership in the Western Campaign. "John B. Hood was uncomplicated, and when they gave him Joe Johnston's army, he assumed that he was expected to go out and fight. This he did, and as a result the South lost 20,000 good soldiers, Atlanta, the presidential election and most of what remained of the war."

Catton also has a special skill in taking complicated situations and describing them with simple eloquence. In talking about the Gettysburg Address, he writes that Lincoln "spoke of liberty and equality instead of victory, as if these words alone could give meaning to what had been done here, and instead of dedicating the ground he called upon those who stood there to dedicate themselves to something that might justify all that Gettysburg had cost them." In describing the end of the war, he writes that after Appomattox, Lee "rode straight into legend and took his people with him...The cause that failed became The Lost Cause, larger than life, taking on color and romance as the years passed, remembered with pride and heart-ache but never again leading to bloodshed. Civil Wars have had worse endings than this."

The Civil War may have ended in 1865, but as long as Bruce Catton's works are still in print, he will continue to turn younger generations into Civil War buffs. What better way can there be to honor our nations past?