The Whirlwind of War: Voices of the Storm, 1861-1865 [Hardcover]

Stephen B. Oates (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 6, 1998

This second book in the extraordinary Voices of the Storm trilogy from prize-winning historian Stephen Oates is a persuasive and dramatic revisionist account of the complex and destructive Civil War years.

The Bloody and Terrible Civil War is brought vividly to life as Stephen B. Oates continues his acclaimed trilogy with The Whirlwind of War. Using dramatic, first-person narrative, Oates impersonates the voices and viewpoints of 11 of the era's principal players: rival presidents Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis; rival generals Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant; legendary abolitionist Frederick Douglass; battlefield nurse Cornelia Hancock; assassin John Wilkes Booth, and others, bringing a new depth of understanding to this turbulent era. Each speaker gets a turn on the stage, relating their points of view and the part each played as a participant or eyewitness in the events that shaped America's future.

Coupling his own impressive research with the best in modern technical scholarship, Oates persuasively documents a host of surprising new facts and conclusions about the period. These include John Wilkes Booth's purported ties to the Confederate Secret Service, and puts forth a convincing argument that Lincoln's assassination was approved and supported by the highest levels of the Confederate government, possibly including Jefferson Davis himself. Rich in detail and historical insight, The Whirlwind of War offers a fresh perspective on our nation's most divisive time.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The middle book in an anticipated trilogy, The Whirlwind of War is a unique study of the Civil War. Oates recounts the great struggle through a series of first-person monologues told in the voices of prominent figures such as Abraham Lincoln, Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, William Tecumseh Sherman, Mary Boykin Chestnut, Ulysses S. Grant, Frederick Douglass, John Wilkes Booth, and others. This original narrative technique brings a kind of freshness to an old and familiar story. It seems as if the characters speak directly to the reader; and Oates, an accomplished historian and biographer, is scrupulous about sticking as close to the historical record as he can. The book's one weakness is that it doesn't deliver a totally comprehensive telling of the Civil War despite its length of more than 700 pages. But the flip side is its strength: the way it helps readers understand the motives, perceptions, and behavior of the Civil War's most important actors. Sometimes it seems like there are too many books written on the Civil War. Oates nonetheless provides a welcome contribution to the field. --John Miller

From Kirkus Reviews

An epic but deeply flawed Civil War history (the second volume of a planned trilogy) suffers from the fictional techniques it employs, while benefiting little from that genre's potential narrative punch. As in his earlier volume, The Approaching Storm (1997), Oates uses invented dialogue, dramatic staging, and ``imaginative'' manipulation of facts in fashioning this nontraditional history of the cataclysmic war years. Characters range from major players like Lincoln, Grant, and Lee to small-timers like Cornelia Hancock, a young battlefield nurse. The results are uneven. Fiery Sherman, his legendary profanity liberated from the expurgation his own age demanded, is a masterpiece of revisionism. Jefferson Davis, whose florid, long-winded monologues read like a caricature of Victorian prose, is a melodramatic nightmare. Oateswho was a consultant in Ken Burns's televised Civil War series, but whose inspiration runs to Faulkner's multiple fictional viewpoints and the gimmicky segues of Robert Altman's filmsstrains to heighten the drama of America's most turbulent period to prove that differing attitudes (a chivalrous code of honor in the South, harsh pragmatism in the North) made the war's outcome inevitable. He pushes the envelope farther than Shelby Foote's sterling history, but with exponentially less effect. Curiously, Oates's fictionalization is less, not more, dramatic. The stoicism of generals desensitized to battlefield carnage, for example, or the fragmentation inherent in 11 different viewpoints (each with personal biases and blind spots) makes for flaccid narrative. The lack of tension is abetted by the absence of the historian's guiding hand, and the much-needed interpretive objectivity it provides. Nowhere is this more apparent than in Oates's putative scoop: John Wilkes Booth's assassination of Lincoln had the approval of the highest Confederate authorities, including Davis himself. Outside Booth's own fevered ranting, the tantalizing scenario is wholly unsupported by Oates's facts or fiction. An ambitious but disappointing history whose drama arises from the historical facts, not from its freehanded embellishment of them. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 864 pages
• Publisher: HarperCollins; 1st edition (May 6, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 006017580X
• ISBN-13: 978-0060175801
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.1 x 2.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,528,815 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Whirlwind suffers from age old stereotypes and myths., September 15, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: The Whirlwind of War: Voices of the Storm, 1861-1865 (Hardcover)

Mr. Oates' first volume in his new and unique Civil War saga was well written and well researched. Although I enjoyed the second volume well enough, I was disappointed to find that he gave credibility to some popular Civil War myths, namely in the case of the Longstreet Gettysburg controversy. Mr. Oates would have done well to consult the most complete and exhaustive work on the subject - Glenn Tucker's "Lee and Longstreet at Gettysburg". Recent research like that of Glenn Tucker's proves that Longstreet acted with vigor and professionalism in coordinating the attacks on the second day at Gettysburg, although he differed with Lee on where the attack should be made. As for Lee ordering an attack at dawn on the third day, it just didn't happen. Mr. Oates has written a decent book, but his treatment of the Gettysburg campaign was flawed, and that is unfortunate. Longstreet deserves much of the credit for creating the only bright spots of that camaign for the Confederate side. I would recommend Mr. Tucker's book for anyone interested in truth rather than controversy. The only other point that I disliked was the treatment of Sherman. I feel he comes off rather simple and shallow. Truth is, Sherman was a military genius and our popular opinion of him is colored by how he was portrayed by the press during the war. He was extremely articulate, immensely thorough and perhaps the most professional and clear minded general the North produced. He was well ahead of his time and many of his controversial opinions have been proven correct and accurate in the generations since the war.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars not up to his other works, December 4, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Whirlwind of War: Voices of the Storm, 1861-1865 (Hardcover)

I found this book tiresome compared to part one [Voices of the Storm] and his other biographies [Lincoln and Martin Luther King] which are outstanding and recommended. The vehicle he uses --e.g. 11 voices of historical figures from the War who alternate perspectives from chapter to chapter is contrived, of questionable authenticity in many segments and eventually, to me, distracting. In volume one this technique gave me a sense of political issues --it just was not as effective in this volume which focused mostly on military issues. A military history needs maps and diagrams to give the reader a sense of what was happening, where and when. The absence of such support weakened that aspect of the story. McPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom is a better source for information on the flow of the Civil War than this volume.

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A innovative and entertaining approach to Civil War history., June 10, 2000

By 

Mike Powers "mkp51" (Woolwich, ME USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Whirlwind of War: Voices of the Storm, 1861-1865 (Paperback)

"The Whirlwind of War" is a very well written book about the American Civil War, with an especially innovative approach. Author Stephen B. Oates interweaves imaginary first-person written accounts of eleven of the war's key figures - among them Abraham Lincoln, Jefferson Davis, U.S. Grant, Robert E. Lee, William T. Sherman, Mary Boykin Chesnut and Mary Livermore - to present the story of America's most tragic war a dramatic and compelling way.

Although the first-person soliloquies are fictional, they are based on obviously extensive and meticulous research, and are filled with historical facts which are detailed and accurate. Actually, Oates adds little in the way of new historical data or interpretation in this book, although the new information on John Wilkes Booth, and the descriptions of the Northern hospital camps by Cornelia Hancock make compelling reading. What I found most fascinating about "The Whirlwind of War" was how effectively Oates was able to bring the characters' personalities so much to life in their soliloquies. Oates doesn't pretend to try to write in the style of Lincoln, Davis, Grant, or the others; still, he allows their personalities to shine through completely. I felt I really got to know the tormented Abraham Lincoln, the laconic U.S. Grant, the profane, manic-depressive William T. Sherman, the reserved and dignified Robert E. Lee, and the bitter Jefferson Davis through their first-person accounts.

Oates' imaginative writing in "The Whirlwind of War" makes it an especially entertaining book, one which gives readers an accurate and reasonably detailed understanding of the people and events which made up America's bloodiest conflict. Highly recommended!