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Summary: Endlessly Fascinating!
Review: This is one of the best books I have ever read. It tells the story of the Civil War in a way that you have never heard it. And more importantly, it tells the story in a way that keeps you turning the pages with all the intensity of a good novel. Even though you know the ending, you won't be able to put this book down. All the humanity of the war, the nuances of character and circumstance are brought vividly to life in this wonderful volume. If you like history, or if you just like compelling reading, this book is a must.
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Summary: Good Book Despite Southern Apology
Review: April 1865 is a good book despite its recurring theme of southern apology. April 1865 gives a good description of the potential guerrilla war that the Civil War could have become if the southern generals had not agreed to surrender. Its description of the fighting in Missouri that devolved from banditry to butchery was chilling. April 1865 also does a good job of providing ample background information on each historical character it highlights. The characterizations of Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis were excellent. By the end of the book, I had a real sense of having known a living Lee and Davis. April 1865 suggests the South fought not to preserve and extent slavery but for self-determination. The war just happened to end about a month after the Confederate Congress agreed to allow slaves to be armed soldiers who would earn their freedom by fighting. This, southern leaders agreed, would lead to the end of slavery. Lee is buoyed up by slighting Grant. Grant's presidency and work on Reconstruction is not mentioned. Confederate cavalry leader Nathan Bedford Forrest's behavior during the Fort Pillow massacre of mostly black Union troops gets a pass (maybe he was responsible, maybe he wasn't). His later founding of the KKK in Tennessee isn't mentioned.
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Summary: april 1865 and much more
Review: Jay Winik titles his work on the American Civil War - April 1865 - The Month That Saved America. However, the book covers much more. It is in fact a comprehensive history of the war with insightful profiles of the major characters of the period. The title sounds like something a publisher picked up to make the title for intriguing. This book was loaned to me by a former classmate. As a phd candidate in American History with an fairly comprehensive background in the war and Reconstruction, I anticipated reading a book that covered very familiar ground. However, I was pleasantly surprised. Winik does a very good job of sumarizing the final days of the war and putting them into a greater context while also providing the reader with background information. I was especially impressed with the information about the period of time between Lee's surrender and the actual secessation of the fighting. Everyone thinks that the war ended with Lee's surrender but there is much more to tell relating to the negotiations between Sherman and Johnston. Winik goes into some detail about the possibilities of a guerilla fighting after the close of the actual combat. I also found the discussion of Natan Bedford Forrest interesting. Contrary to many historians, Winik shows the Lincolns as a loving couple and as a result is much kinder to Mary Todd Lincoln than most. As a graduate student, I have read many books about very specific instances in the war and reconstruction - so specific sometimes that you tend to forget the larger picture. Winik gives an excellent overview. If I were teaching a survey course on American History I think that I would make this book required reading.
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Summary: Excellent history and analysis of fateful month
Review: A few years ago I read an account of the five days in May 1940 that may have determined the course of the second world war. It was a good book, in part because of the decision to focus on a few fateful days and the key decision makers that forged history. With "April 1865", Winik uses the same approach, covering a span of thirty days, and achieves a marvelous result. This is a great book. Casual readers of history (meaning few Americans) are not likely to be fully cognizant of the slender thread that held the nation together in the last month of the war, with Lee's surrender on in early April and Lincoln's death a few days later. Even fewer Americans know just how delicate the situation became as the war came to a close. Other events stormed around these historic memories. The egos and decisions of generals Grant, Sherman, Johnston, and Mosby played a large part in the end of the war and the start of the peace. And the politicians, namely Lincoln, Johnson and Davis, had to work very hard that the peace was not more disruptive than the war. Winik asks and adderesses basic questions about motives in the North and in the South. What role did emancipation play in the North and in the South? What plan for peace did Lincoln have? What made Lee fianlly choose to surrender? Why didn't the South extend the battle into a guerrila war? Why did President Davis decline to give up after Lee surendered? What might have happended had Lincoln survived? Winik makes a compelling case that small events, basic decisions, and the character of people can color great events and make for a better world. A few good maps and integrated, thorough endnotes make "April 1865" easy to read. His 'thumbnail' biographies of the key players provide good explanations for the complex motives that produced peace at the end of four years of terrible war. And that color our national culture to this day.
Rating: 
Summary: interesting but disappointing
Review: Interesting and in-depth characterizations of leading figures (a fresh and sympathetic Lee) but several shortcomings: jumps around chronologically and leaves some tales unfinished until much later; annoying habit of putting many words in quotes without attribution-- as though someone definitely said them but we don't know who; about 1/4 of book is "notes" but actually a bibliography-- an endless list of sources of no immediate value to reader looking for interesting footnotes or more detailed information on a subject; finally, last few chapters devolve into author's pronouncements and conclusions that aren't nearly as interesting as the actual civil war
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Summary: What If...?
Review: Winik has managed to write a readable book about the events of April 1865. He gives brief biographical sketches of all the main characters, which will be helpful to those readers who are not well-versed in Civil War history. He also posits an interesting notion-that had not Lee and Johnston surrendered when they did instead of carrying on guerilla warfare, the outcome of the Civil War could have much different. While I enjoyed the book from an overall perspective, I must mention a few annoying things. First, there were quite a few typos and English usage errors throughout the book. Maybe because I read the First Edition, and all errors were not weeded out? Secondly, Winik really beats a dead horse over and over as he breathlessly conjectures what might have been had the Southern generals not been so ready to surrender or the Northern generals not been so magnanimous in accepting surrender and granting favorable terms to the vanquished. I would recommend this book as a secondary reading assignment only after one completes the Catton trilogy or the Foote trilogy.
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Summary: Color brought to the Civil War
Review: The notion that one lonely month in our nation's history could have been so pivotal is an enticing one and Jay Winik has written a wonderful book to support this idea, full of rich detail and color. Mr. Winik at heart is a great storyteller (and I mean that sincerely). His narrative, while certainly not always straightforward in a timeline sense, offers the reader a chance to glimpse the end of the Civil War and the presidential assassination through the eyes of two men in particular, Robert E. Lee and Abraham Lincoln. He weighs in on the sides of these two as the chief decision-making opponents in the last days of the war. I felt as if I were on the battlefields. That's the mark of a great author. He draws you in to the fray, not as a viewer but as a full-fledged participant. His pages regarding the meeting of Lee and Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House and the hours that led up to them are riveting. His premise that the war might well have gone on in guerilla fashion had not Lee made his decsion to surrender is new to me. We certainly never were taught that angle in school. Even the best raconteurs know how to bend a thought and overlap a fact or two. Still, I would highly recommend it. Mr. Winik deserves praise for bringing the events of April, 1865 into focus and his style in realting these effects is superb.
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Summary: A Page-Turner
Review: I loved this book. Somehow Winik was able to have me entralled with the mystery of what could happen even though I knew what WOULD happen (at least on the main events). I was fasinated by the drama that was played out in this crucial point in our history. Winik makes a great case for the subtitle of this being a month that saved America. (Personally I think it would be better to say that it was a month that shaped America.) Nevertheless, I highly recommend this book and place Winik in the same category as other modern history writers like Stephen Ambrose, Sharrar, and David McCullough (no relation).
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Summary: A book I couldn't put down!
Review: While not a Civil War buff, I found this book spell-binding. Winik has done remarkable research and it shows! I could not put this book down...even though I knew the ending. This book reads as if it were written by an eyewitness with a camcorder. I highly recommend it for anyone with the slightest interest in the events that helped shape our country. His references to terrorism are uncanny since this book was published prior to September 11. Winick treats both sides of the conflict fairly and without prejudice. As Winick points out repeatedly, had events unfolded with a different outcome--even slightly different--our great country may not be what it is today.
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Summary: Could there be anything new written on the Civil War? YES!
Review: I watched Jay Winik give a talk about April 1865 on C-SPAN's Bookspan. WOW! We just HAD to get this book after listening to this incredibly articulate author. I didn't think anyone could really put a new (non-revisionist) set of ideas about the Civil War, but Winik really focuses on the men and the time of April 1865 and how the events of that month were such a pivotal time in our history. The section on the Booth plot revealed facts I'd forgotton or didn't know (the attack also included Seward, Secretary of State and was as devastating in its time as the attack on the WTC.) The insights about Lee are fascinating. Lincoln held Lee in great esteem and Lee's gentleman-soldier qualities probably saved the United States from a protracted struggle and ultimate destruction. If Lee and his men had gone guerilla, as had been suggested to him, we might never have survived the Civil War and would have been easy pickings for European powers. Lee literally determined the course of history during that fateful month. If you are a history fan, you will of course be interested in reading this fresh view on a well-trodden subject. If you aren't normally a history fan, but have recently gotten more interested in American history and patriotic subjects due to the recent attacks on the US, you will find valuable insight into our national character and background in this book. Highly recommended.
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