Customer Reviews

The Valley of the Shadow: Two Communities in the American Civil War - The Eve of War

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I would highly recommend this book and CD-ROM package to anyone who is interested in social history of the South or Civil War history. The letters and newspapers sections are especially fascinating. They give incredible first-hand accounts of the daily lives of people of these two communities. The data seems endless. The team that compliled this information is to be commended.

"This title is not what I expected it to be, a comparison of two communities, one in Virginia and one in Pennsylvania, during in the American Civil War. It is not a comparative social, or economic, or political history. It is instead a very short introduction to the "Valley of the Shadows" project in which primary sources related to the history of each community during the war are placed on-line presumably for use by teachers of American history who want their students to be able to see actual diary entries, newspaper articles, etc. etc. prepared by people who lived during the war years. This title explains how these two communities were selected but it is left for classroom students to do the comparative analysis. One might write a comparative study of these two communities based on the "Valley of the Shadows" materials but this book is not it.