Monday, April 19, 2010

The American Civil War: A Military History

Keegan presents a compelling "outsider's" history of the civil war. As a British historian, he is sufficiently removed from contemporary American politics to provide an objective analysis of the war. He acknowledges that Lincoln could have been arrested if he gave his anti-slavery speeches today. (His description of blacks as intellectually inferior could be considered a hate crime. This seems ironic in a day when we have a black president that invokes the image of Lincoln in his campaign. However, a son of an African economist and a white Anthropologist who grew up in Indonesia and Hawaii is probably not they type of person Lincoln had in mind.)

Alas, the books writing is a major pitfall. There is also a significant dearth of endnotes. He makes many pronouncements of fact, but has no source to back them up.
He also seems to say the same thing over and over in slightly different ways. (I kept wondering if I misplaced my bookmark.) Some sentences seem to wonder on with excessive modifiers, leaving the meaning ambiguous. The content kept me interested in the book, but the writing eventually caused me to give up.

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