Rating: 
Summary: Intuitive Historical Genius
Review: I had two great grandfathers from Arkansas that fought on the side of the Confederacy during the Civil War. I know that one was a surgeon and the other was in the infantry. In the 1920s my family moved to Texas a state colorful with history, legend and folklore. The Civil War has always been a topic of great interest to me. However, my dad relocated to the East (after marrying my mom) just before serving in the Korean War. Being born and raised in New England myself, I have always had mixed loyalties when it came to studying the Civil War. That in alone has always fueled my interest. This book by Jay Winik is by far the most interesting book to come out in years. His analysis of information and facts is really innovative. I like movies, especially older ones. I keep telling my friends that to appreciate many older films you have to put yourself into the time and place of when the film was made to really understand the social, moral and ethical issues that were current to understand the level and importance of its impact. What was going on at the time? Not only does Jay Winik address this question but also he brilliantly and intuitively interprets logical scenarios that could have taken place. He profiles the psyches of Lee, Grant, Lincoln, Andrew Johnson, Davis and others and examines the actions of these men in context to the exact time and place of many critical events occurring in that last month of the war. Winik is never judgmental but he makes brilliant observations on the way these historical figures changed their thinking from the beginning of the war to and during its last days. It seems evident that slavery was a non-issue to the Confederacy after four years. It seemed more a struggle for land and the right to sovereignty and honor of it. If General Lee had ever reorganized the struggle to guerrilla war tactics that raises many profound questions. Our ancestors had fought the British with these tactics on several confrontations so there was a historical precedent to do so. It seems that Lee made both a rational and moral choice in his decision to surrender not even knowing what the terms would be. He took a gamble but it also appears that Grant was a very practical individual and let Lee's men keep their side arms and horses against popular sentiment in the North to vanquish the South. People in the North would have seen Lee hanged buried and then salt the dirt he lay in. This is such a great book because it gets the reader's mental juices flowing. Winik gives the reader insight and understanding of just how frail our very existence as a nation is. History is like Physics where every action has a reaction. Jay Winik has raised the interpretation and analysis of historical records to the next level. How many other historians will now use this approach as a springboard in their areas of expertise?
Rating: 
Summary: Over-rated ahistorical journalistic pap
Review: This book is well written, which is about all the positive I would say for it. The book contains, as far as I could tell, absolutely nothing new. Just a retread, at a very high level, of numerous other works on the Civil War. Why was it needed to be an addition to the already huge Civil War literature? It was not! Why did it need that pretentious and overblown title? Must have been the publisher's choice, to sell more, since the book in no place makes the successful argument that this was the point that saved America.
Rating: 
Summary: Flawed Telling of End of Civil War
Review: Winik has chosen a fascinating subject and wrapped a thesis around it to produce his work.In early 1865 it was very unclear how the Civil War was going to end. Clearer was that the force of arms of the Union would finally crush Southern field armies. Less clear was whether or not that would be enough to end the rebellion. Winik focus on the possibility that the leaders and soldiers of the Confederacy might have melted away to the hills and forrests of the South to wage a protracted guerilla war. As Winik sees it, this was a very real option. It was what Jefferson Davis wanted and had the potential of either perpetuating the conflict for years or tipping opinion in the North finally in favor of a settlement becuase of war weariness. Of course guerilla warfare did not come about. First Lee, then Johnston and other Confederate department commanders surrendered their soldiers en mass along lines that recognized them as honorable combatants and allowed them to go home with their dignity and lives. Winik's book focuses on the choices faced by Robert E. Lee as he fled from Richmond and began his race with Grant to Appomattox Court House. This is a different kind of book. It's not straight history. The battles and military manuevers of the final month are sketched rather thinly. This book falls more in the lines of a treatise or long essay. Winik constantly expounds his thesis of the guerilla war option and it's possible results in this almost 500 page book. The military situation and stories weave in an out of this narrative. Mini-biographies of Grant, Lee, Lincoln, Jefferson and other principals also are included, usually right before something interesting is going to happen. I was disappointed, and don't agree with the majority of reviewers that place this book on the top shelf of Civil War histories. It is interesting in part, and I think the close of the war does deserve a book of this length. I just think it could have been done better. The guerilla war thesis is ok, but it dominates the book. Winik may have been on to something, but his case rests upon assertions as much as fact. It is not clear from the record that guerilla war was a realistic option in the minds of Confederate leadership. Winik elevates the possibility to a higher level than I believe history warrents. The pace of the book is often frustrating. In reviewing the military situations faced by various armies, Winik usually describes the status of the forces then cuts to a long biography of the generals involved. It breaks up the pace of the story and spends a lot of time on background that is extraneous. I also find Winik's writing style a hit or miss. He tries to emulate Shelby and Catton by describing this story in a narrative and literary voice. Sometimes it works, sometimes it rings hollow and overdone. I was dissappointed to discover that eminent historians such as James McPherson and Doris Kearns Goodwin apparently write cover blurbs with out reading the whole book. Winik's work unfortunatly contains serious errors of fact that these two would have picked up on -- I can imagine they will be a little bit embarrassed when they do uncover some of the author's misses. For example, the author seems to think there are two General Longstreets -- "James" and "Pete". In fact, Pete was Gen. James Longstreet's nickname. Winik lists Salmon P. Chase as Secretary of the Treasury at this time, when in fact Lincoln had made him Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Winik makes the statement that Generals Johnston and Sherman were never to meet again after the surrender -- in fact Johnston died as a result of attending Sherman's funeral and refusing to put his hat on during inclement weather out of respect. He also muffed Stanton's great quote regarding Lincoln at the time of his death: "Now he belongs to the ages" is mis-rendedred "Now he belongs to the angels." These errors are annoying and left me wondering what other facts might be suspect. On the whole, this is an ok Civil War book. The end of the war is a fascinating topic. I personnally would have liked a more thorough military and political examination of the period. Winik's thesis is interesting, but the book suffers from errors, disjointedness and sometimes overwrought prose.
Rating:
Summary: Gushy Prose, Not Much Substance
Review: Have publishing companies fired all their editors? Mr. Minik had a good 50 page story. To achieve book length, he's added about 250 pages of filler: a thumbnail biography of every person who participated in the Civil War; an Epilogue that seems to restate the first chapter verbatim; an amazing chapter that does nothing but list people who were alive in 1865 and would later become famous; and overheated sentences stumbling over one another, paragraph after paragraph, chapter after chapter. Mr. Minik appears never to have had a reflection about the Civil War that did not find its way into at least four sentences of this book, nor an adjective that did not need to be supplemented by two other adjectives with roughly the same meaning. The writing is awful. Mr. Minik explains in the Notes that he wanted to use vivid writing to make the story come alive. But vivid writing by a historian is like free verse by a poet: wonderful if done well but usually done poorly. Mr. Minik shows no restraint. His style is melodramatic, redundant, inexact, tiresome. Stylistic flourishes like "Grant was brave, that and more" can work once or twice, but not over and over. William Manchester's writing is vivid. Mr. Minik's writing is just poor. Perhaps the problem is that Mr. Minik thinks so highly of himself. He describes his wife as "A gifted writer in her own right." He explains that his experience advising high-level government officials has given him unique insight into civil wars. His high level of self-esteem has apparently led Mr. Minik to believe that to leave out any morsel of observation or to pare down the sylistic embellishments would be to cheat his readers. Would that he had done so!
Rating:
Summary: Skeletons in the Closet
Review: Every American adult should be forced to buy and read this book. In developing his thesis that the manner in which the Civil War ended created modern America, Winik cites many historical events which we either did not learn in school or forgot. For example, who knows that the Confederates were seriously considering emancipating any slave who would serve in their army? Who knows that atrocities were committed in Missouri and Kansas that differ little from those in Rawanda and the former Yugoslavia? I was shocked to learn African-Americans from Louisiana fought for the Confederacy and one of the great Confederate armies and the last to surrender was Indian and Indian led. Winik leaves the reader with an appreciation for the complexity of American history. Ultimately Americans are fortunate that the United States made it through April 1865 even if there are a few skeletons in the closet.
Rating: 
Summary: Scholarship With Human Touch Leaves Lee Myth Intact
Review: I agree with almost all of the praise other reviewers have given this book. However, Winik exhibits unshakable faith in the "Marble Man" myth of Robert E. Lee, thus providing his otherwise clear vision an extremely effective set of blinders. Lee stated many times that the war would be over when the Army of Northern Virginia was tied down in a siege situation, yet continued the fight for eight months after being pinned down at Petersburg. By knowingly choosing honor over reason, he was also choosing it over thousands of lives. Having been made Confederate Commander in Chief, Lee was as authorized at Appommattox to surrender all the forces under his command as he was to surrender the Army of Northern Virginia, yet he left Johnston, Kirby-Smith and the other Southern generals to pointlessly fight on. Finally, while Winik quotes Lee's U.S. Army resignation, in which he stated that he would never raise his sword again except in defense of Virginia, he fails to explain the contrast between this promise and the 1862 and 1863 invasions of the North, much less the attempt to abandon Virginia and join Joseph Johnston's army near Raleigh after the abandonment of the Petersburg lines. By accepting Lee's traditional, near-deific role in American mythology, Winik handicaps himself as a historian and the scope of his subjects as a writer. General Joseph Johnston, in particular, is denied stature thereby. The strengths of this book far outweigh its weaknesses, and I have intentionally given it four stars, but its promotion of the Lee myth incite me to counter.
Rating:
Summary: End of the Civil War
Review: This book is so well written that it reads almost like a novel! I was immediately pulled into the narrative, and even though I knew how the book would end, I was mesmerized by the language and structure of the work. It covers a lot of familiar territory, but gives a new twist to many of the decisions made in the fateful month of the book's title. When you think about it, just one or two different decisions by key persons, and the entire history of our country could have been different. According to this book we have a lot to thank Robert E. Lee for in his last decisions of the war, and a few other Confederate leaders. If you don't know to what I am referring, I strongly recommend this book to you.
Rating:
Summary: New Insight on the Civil War
Review: This is both a gripping account and an incredibly new and fresh analysis not just of the Civil War but of the little understood hinge of history which it consituted in American history. I have read Civil War books for years but have never been treated to the unique and impelling insights of this book. No one I have read has ever pointed out the war's gains as well as tragic losses to the history and unity of this country the way Winik does. It is as if the war was the major and the crucial force that forceably united, separately, both the Southern states and the northern states and thus enabled a single nation formed from these two newly unified spheres to become an America more unified than it ever otherwise would have been. Thus, the book not only describes in incredible detail the single, final month, April 1865, of that war but portrays a much wider canvass for a backdrop than even multivolume series on the war.
Rating:
Summary: It's About Time Someone Pointed This Out
Review: It's about time someone pointed out what a valuable service to the nation the principals in this story performed. While the book is really more narrative than analytical, it does expose for debate a proposition that students of history ought to consider carefully--that we are one country today (rather than two constantly warring factions bound within a common border) because in April of 1865 a handfull of men had that rare combination of vision and guts that compelled them to swallow their pride (in the case of the southern protagonists) and extend magnanimity (Lincoln, Grant, et.al.) in the face of enormous emotional and popular incentives to do the opposite. While this is probably a too-nuanced view of history to sit well with those who like their heros and villans cut entirely from distinct cloth, it is closer to life than history usually gets.
Rating: 
Summary: Robert E. Lee as Ho Chi Minh?
Review: It stinks. The first half is a "what if?" What if, instead of surrendering at Appomattox, Lee had taken to the hills and set up a guerrilla army? Winik likens this to the Viet Cong. He ignores that Lee's army is starving, exhausted, and just wants to go home. Winik uses sports write throughout. "Unlike a Washington, or a Jefferson...." I finally gave up when he misquoted Stanton's great comment on Lincoln's death, "now he belongs to the ages," as "now he belongs to the angels."
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