{"id":1929,"date":"2015-09-19T08:24:26","date_gmt":"2015-09-19T13:24:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/38enso.com\/?p=1929"},"modified":"2015-09-19T08:25:14","modified_gmt":"2015-09-19T13:25:14","slug":"the-u-s-civil-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/38enso.com\/?p=1929","title":{"rendered":"The U.S. Civil War"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over the past few decades, I have accumulated thousands of books. I have also donated thousands as I cull my collection to a manageable amount. No longer is “having the most books” the goal. It is now to have the right books and to pass on the other titles to others to enjoy.<\/p>\n

I sorted my non-fiction books by subject. I became fascinated by the U.S. CIvil War ever since the Ken Burns PBS series THE CIVIL WAR<\/a>.\u00a0The Civil War more than any other event shaped America. \u00a0At the time the series debuted, I was a new book buyer at Waldenbooks (at that time having over 1,200 locations). I was given History for it generally was a sleepy category and seldom had bestsellers. Ken Burns changed that.<\/p>\n

The book that benefitted the most was the official tie-in, THE CIVIL WAR : AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY by Geoffrey Ward (Knopf)<\/a>. What a wonderful book and made the perfect gift. This book is still in print and worth adding to anyone’s collection. It was a $50 book back when that was a lot of money for a book, and the sales exploded the History category. But it also helped sell so many other books.\"IMG_0010\"<\/p>\n

Stumbled across three books that I loved that helped me understand the dynamics:<\/p>\n

BATTLE CRY OF FREEDOM by James McPherson (Oxford)<\/a> — this is the best, single volume history of the U.S. Civil War ever written. I realized watching the Ken Burns series that my understanding of the war was lacking. So I turned to McPherson’s 904-page tome. It was wonderful. Although over 900-pages, it was still a “quick read” in that the story of the war just flowed. This book gave me more background on the most important event in American history. I may re-read it now.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_0011\"THE CIVIL WAR : A NARRATIVE by Shelby Foote (Random House)<\/a>\u00a0— an amazing feat of writing and research. This three-volume, 1.2-million word opus is amazing. It took me a bit longer to plow through this set, but it was worth it. Foote was one of the talking heads on the Burns series and became a star because of it. His story-telling prowess made the events come to life. He spoke as if he was actually experiencing the events live.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_0012\"A BATTLEFIELD ATLAS OF THE CIVIL WAR by Craig Symonds (N&A Publishing)<\/a> — while reading the other books, I needed better visuals on the battles. This book was great to use as a companion to the narratives. The maps are clean and clear. The minimilist style of the maps was perfect. There are a lot of books of maps on the battles on the Civil War, but I found this to be the most effective.<\/p>\n

I read all of these in physical book form for at the time, ebooks were not available. But if I was to read today, I would stick with the physical editions.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Over the past few decades, I have accumulated thousands of books. I have also donated thousands as I cull my … Learn more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[144,126,10,136,135,28],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/38enso.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1929"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/38enso.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/38enso.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/38enso.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/38enso.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1929"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/38enso.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1929\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1935,"href":"http:\/\/38enso.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1929\/revisions\/1935"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/38enso.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1929"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/38enso.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1929"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/38enso.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1929"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}