A Nation Transformed

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY 8 JAN 2007

In a rambling account, California State history professor Henig and Chabor College instructor Niderost seek to prove the obvious: that the watershed event of the Civil War marshaled enormous social, political, geographical, mechanical and medical changes, leaving nearly every aspect of the United States utterly revised. As Harvard professor George Ticknor wrote in 1869, because of the war, "It does not seem to me as if I were living in the country in which I was born." After the war, blacks were free, emergency medical technology (not to mention funeral technology) was much improved, and the nation's naval options had been enhanced to include usable submarines and minesweepers. The war also left behind a new cynicism vis- -vis the Constitution and its civil rights protections this after Lincoln's suspension of the writ of habeas corpus. Other legacies included a finely tuned (if unjust and corrupt) conscription system, the start of what would become a tradition of presidential assassination and the launch of the transcontinental railroad. While few can argue with Henig's and Niderost's catalogue of war-born innovations, their project remains just that a laundry list, with little synthesis. Illus.