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The Best One-Volume History of the American Civil War Ever Written
A review of ‘Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era’
According to Wikipedia (the alleged font of all knowledge in the 21st century), there have been more than 60,000 books written about the American Civil War. There is no truly accurate count; the number they use as a reference point is from 2001, and since hundreds of books about the war continue to be written every year, they have made an educated guess at the number today. The total number of books is likely higher than this, with some historians putting the total at greater than 100,000 volumes.
Faced with such a mountain of books, where should a person interested in the Civil War even start? There are superb books about individual battles like Stephen W. Sears’ Landscape Turned Red: The Battle of Antietam, books about the political aspects of the war like Doris Kearns Goodwin’s prize-winning Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, and acclaimed biographies like Michael Korda’s Clouds of Glory: The Life and Legend of Robert E. Lee.
Most readers who are new to the subject, however, will want an overview of the war before digging into the details about individual aspects of it. For decades, the two most popular options were Bruce Catton’s three-volume history (The Coming…
