The Longest Night
A Military History of the Civil War
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2.7 • 6 Ratings
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- $15.99
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
Like no other conflict in our history, the Civil War casts a long shadow onto modern America," writes David Eicher. In his compelling new account of that war, Eicher gives us an authoritative modern single-volume battle history that spans the war from the opening engagement at Fort Sumter to Lee's surrender at Appomattox (and even beyond, to the less well-known but conclusive surrender of Confederate General Edmund Kirby Smith in Galveston, Texas, on June 2, 1865).
Although there are other one-volume histories of the Civil War -- most notably James M. McPherson's Pulitzer Prize-winning Battle Cry of Freedom, which puts the war in its political, economic, and social context -- The Longest Night is strictly a military history. It covers hundreds of engagements on land and sea, and along rivers. The Western theater, often neglected in accounts of the Civil War, and the naval actions along the coasts and major rivers are at last given their due. Such major battles as Gettysburg, Antietam, and Chancellorsville are, of course, described in detail, but Eicher also examines lesser-known actions such as Sabine Pass, Texas, and Fort Clinch, Florida. The result is a gripping popular history that will fascinate anyone just learning about the Civil War while at the same time offering more than a few surprises for longtime students of the War Between the States.
The Longest Night draws on hundreds of sources and includes numerous excerpts from letters, diaries, and reports by the soldiers who fought the war, giving readers a real sense of life -- and death -- on the battlefield. In addition to the main battle narrative, Eicher analyzes each side's evolving strategy and examines the tactics of Lee, Grant, Johnston, Sherman, and other leading figures of the war. He also discusses such militarily significant topics as prisons, railroads, shipbuilding, clandestine operations, and the expanding role of African Americans in the war.
The Longest Night is a riveting, indispensable history of the war that James McPherson in the Foreword to this book calls "the most dramatic, violent, and fateful experience in American history."
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In a period when the study of campaigns and battles is considered old-fashioned if not misleading, the military side of the Civil War continues to receive a higher proportion of attention than any other modern conflict. Eicher (The Civil War in Books), associate editor of North and South and managing editor of Astronomy, manifests a corresponding degree of intellectual courage in offering this 900-odd page operational history. The war's causes, the armies' composition, the soldiers' motivations all take second place to a straightforward account of the fighting of a war that has already produced shelves of excellent combat narratives by such outstanding scholars as Thomas Rhea and Harry Pfanz. Eicher does more than hold his own in distinguished company and establishes himself as a remarkable battle narrator. He does set pieces like the attack on Little Round Top at Gettysburg or the doomed Confederate charge at Franklin with the verve of Shelby Foote or Wiley Sword. His accounts of Antietam and Gettysburg, Stone's River and Chickamauga, are models of clarity and cohesion, correspondingly useful introductions to the detailed monographs that often lose readers in thickets of data and analysis. Eicher is no less successful on a larger scale. His presentation of the Vicksburg campaign will serve general readers and specialists alike as an overview of one of the war's most complex operations. Eicher offers no significant revisions of conventional wisdom on crucial issues nor does he seek controversy in a field that often invites it. This book,with maps by Lee Vande Visse and a foreword by James M. McPherson (Battle Cry of Freedom), succeeds above all in demonstrating that the Civil War offered no shortcuts to victory or defeat at the sharp end of battle.
Customer Reviews
The Longest Night
It is an excellent reference account of the military actions of the Civil War. It seems as if the author has covered almost all the military actions in detail. It is highly readable and seems quite even-handed in its accounts. From the quality of its writing, it is a four (perhaps even five star) book.
But I can not understand why there are no maps! Nor even recommendations for websites with maps to supplement the narrative.
Also the book in terms of its iBook version is a typographical disaster. Missing spaces, missing hyphens, wrong accented characters are to be found on almost every page. A shame that the production aspect of the iBook version is so shoddy. You can certainly still read the book, but the lack of quality in this iBook version made me want to see if the Kindle version is better. I have noticed this poor production quality in other iBooks. Prospective reader beware.
Excellent.
A very detailed book that had me hooked from the beginning.