North v South

[caddyman]

Much to the amusement of colonel_maxim, ellefurtle and I have been watching her DVDs of North and South - at least we’ve been watching season one, I think. There has been quite a lot of TV time, four very long episodes and we’ve only just had the Harper’s Ferry incident. I am beginning to wonder if the show doesn’t re-enact the American Civil War in real time.

Some of the programme is very cheesy; I rather expect Rhett Butler to wander in on occasion and give them all a dressing down before wandering off to do something heroic back in Gone-With-The-Wind-Ville, but some of it is first class. It does suffer somewhat from the glossy, with decorous dirt and gallant injury syndrome of so much US TV drama, but then that should be expected for something filmed in the mid ‘80s, I guess¹.

Anyway, the point is, that though we haven’t actually got even as far as secession and the outbreak of way (just) yet, I find that it has rekindled my interest in the history of the period. Somewhere I have a copy of Battle Cry of Freedom but I seem to have misplaced it. I was going to dig it out and have a re-read. As annoyed as I am that I cannot find it, I do recall that I found the writing style rather hard going last time I tackled it many moons back.

Does anyone out there have any recommendations for a readable (preferably single-volume) history of the American Civil War? I am aware that countless trees have died to provide paper for the hundreds (or thousands) of worthy tomes on the period, but I should like something a little more succinct and accessible.

¹ I have always wondered why this should be; US TV is often very unadventurous, pandering to knot-browed Neanderthal sentiments on the religious right in the bible belt on the one hand and the slack-jaw intellect of the inbred mountain communities on the other. How does the mass of normal citizenry cope? Hollywood on the other hand often goes off in quite the opposite direction. The rule is not, of course universal (no pun intended) and a lot of TV in the past 10-15 years has been relatively more realistic in depiction if not story lines. Hill Street Blues was a standout in its day, but would be lost these days amongst the “gritty” crime shows, but US soaps are still very squeaky and plastic. Or at least the ones that make it over here, are.

Comments

[delvy.livejournal.com]

I have several good ones at home. I'll check when I get back to my bookshelves.

[ellefurtle.livejournal.com]

I love them so! Sweeping music and everything. I had to wrestle them back off my sister when she borrowed them.

[ladkyis.livejournal.com]

There is a series called The American Civil War. A Film by Ken Burns.
It is on DVD and it is excellent. It was on one of the channels and I managed to watch every episode except the first one so I kept watching and missed the first one every time. Then it was on all of one weekend and I managed to see episode one. I now have the DVD set and still put it on - The voice over is one of those american voices that you either hate or love but the pictures are amazing.
This was the first war that was documented with photographs and some of them are ... awesome!

One Volume...

[jrittenhouse.livejournal.com]

...makes it harder.

The American Heritage History of the Civil War (get the version added to by McPherson over Catton's original) is nicely illoed and decent.

McPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom is probably far better as an in-depth resource.

For a quick and interesting read, I'd throw in APRIL 1865 by Winik.

Re: One Volume...

[caddyman.livejournal.com]

Thanks for that; I'll keep an eye out (provided it isn't too expensive - one for my Amazon Wish List, perhaps!).

[thomryng.livejournal.com]

I might venture to recommend Shelby Foote's three-volume The Civil War: A Narrative.

In the video department, one can't go wrong with Ken Burns' "The American Civil War".

[caddyman.livejournal.com]

Sounds very learned and potentially expensive! As above, it may be one for my Amazon Wish List...

[innerdoggie.livejournal.com]

I wandered here from mollpeartree and I was about to recommend Battle Cry of Freedom. I don't have much of a brain for military history, but now I think I have the battle sequence in my head a lot more clearly. I thought the political and social history parts of the book were very good, too.

Part of my problem was growing up in NW Arkansas, we went to the Pea Ridge battlefield park every year in elementary school for a field trip. This was a fairly important battle in March 1862 and the USA won. Although our part of Arkansas was heavily USA-supporting at the time of the War, many people later romanticized the CSA and the good folks at the battlefield park in the 1960s didn't want to offend anybody. So they were very vague about who won.

Now their exhibit is clearer about who won, I noticed when I visited a couple of years ago.