The many reviews have described the book well. Read at least an overview of the Civil War before this one or the incomplete descriptions of the events and sequence of the war will be confusing. In some parts the sequence was confusing even so, but not too much.
The strength of this book for me was the social context, although in my view the author was too kind to the postwar South in describing confusion and not hate in the reinstitution of racial controls.
I was annoyed with the book at many points but kept reading for its ideas that were new to me, as a person who grew up in the South and (unavoidedly) lived the Civil War during all of my youth. The author is right that the South has not progressed, although whether this is a social (racial) or an agricultural matter I cannot say. The North has had its social (immigrant/racial) issues as well, so I credit a lot of the relative success of the North to having profitable hand/person/manufacturing work other than growing crops.
The first revelation was the strength of the feeling, in the 1830s when this book starts, that America might not be able to continue the Grand Experiment in the generation after the founders. This concern was strengthened by the failure of democracy in Europe following its revolutions. The part that struck me was three reasons that Americans feared a Civil War, on page 7: 1) Americans believed that an "excess of democratic forces had contributed" to the failure of the European rebellions. I wish the author had explained what he meant about this, but it was the last two points that really struck me: 2) "...despotism, not democracy, inevitably emerges from chaos." I think history since that time has borne out this observation, most recently in Egypt. 3) "Finally, democratic institutions are fragile plants. they require constant nurturing, and even then their survival is not certain. America was a lonely outpost in an undemocratic world."
That last one really struck me, as today there is less concern in this country that America is unique and fragile. It seems to me that more people seem intent on breaking and dividing than building and finding the common ground where we can. And I was only on page 7. There were many more revelations to follow.
Later, in the section on the southern period of reconstruction I came to another point that I found particularly timely, as the southern whites reinstituted power over the black population. I used to say that the state of my birth and upbringing was a century behind. Now we have turned over a new century, so they are now two centuries behind. The court decision on the Voting Rights Act will allow them to get a tighter hold on that past. I have lived somewhere else for many years, and I hate to go back.
So, I appreciated the social history and the insights. I read the book on a Kindle. It was the first long book I had read on one, and it worked just fine -- I thought holding the 600-page printed book would be an issue. The illustrations are just a bunch of dark shapes on the Kindle, but I understand they are not very clear in the book either. I bookmarked pages and haven't figured out how to get back to the bookmarks, so I'm glad the part I wanted to quote was on an early page.
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Top reviews from other countries
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Puts the Civil War in the context of 19th century America
