Blood : Stories of Life and Death from the Civil War

Rating:
Summary: Fascinating collection!
Review: I listened to the audio version of this book and found it wonderful. The stories are read by excellent actors. General Pickett's letters to his wife during the Gettysburg campaign were particularly moving. My attention was strained a bit by the length of the excerpts from Walt Whitman, but don't get me wrong, they were interesting.

The topics covered by this book are varied, which I found helpful to understanding the Civil War years. Lincoln's words on slavery tell us how challenging it was for him to try to move the country forward on that issue. From another writer we hear how a slave family struggled during the war. We hear orders written by General Sherman, and a report on the difficult life of prisoners.

I found this excellent for listening to while driving.

Rating:
Summary: A very useful series of interesting primary sources.
Review: I purchased this book without having any firsthand knowledge of it as a background source and I haven't been minutely disappointed. Kadzis assembled both primary and secondary sources either from the time of the Civil War or from more modern secondary source writings about aspects of that war. In any case the extracts were singularly well chosen and are valuable for my purposes. I would recommend Kadzis' compilation to any person searching for a single source of Civil War rememberances written at the time or of modern fiction writers using the events of that war around which to build their longer story. The writings he has selected are very useful and interesting.

Rating:
Summary: Sort of a mixed bag
Review: I think this would have been a better anthology if the editor had spent more time finding sources. It doesn't really seem like he searched lesser-known documents; just about everything here is pretty well known. The quality ranges from excellent to somewhat pointless.

Rating:
Summary: A strong anthology
Review: This book is in a series put out by Adrenaline books and each book contains certain selections chosen by the editor. The selections are generally either excerpts from books, excerpts from diaries and journals, short stories, or an occasional essay. I look at how good the writing is, and how good the stories are.

This is a strong anthology in many ways. It had a variety of civil war literature that helps to give a fuller picture of the civil war experience. There are many letters, stories, and diary entries and even a copy of orders given by a General. We get a picture of the inner workings of the war by people directly involved, as well as a picture of the world outside the war and how it was effected. We hear aspects of the war from multiple points of view. A soldier's fighting experience, a General's commanding view, letters to loved ones back home, the viewpoint of a young southern girl, life in a military prison. The reader gets to see not just the war, but the world it encompassed.

The anthology is made even stronger by the selections of famous people's writings. We get to read the words of General Ulysses S. Grant, Stephen Crane, Generals Pickett and Sherman, Abraham Lincoln, and even Walt Whitman (who worked in the hospitals treating wounded soldiers from both sides).

The only negative thing about this book is that it has no amazing powerful pieces. Almost all the selections are good (with two or three exceptions), but none are outstanding, in terms of either the writing or the story. There are no exceptionally well written pieces and no really incredible stories. This is unfortunate, but does not detract too much from the overall book. And also this volume includes some fiction, which generally does not exist in these series of books. Other than that the book is good and worth reading.

Rating:
Summary: Not Much Adrenaline Needed On This One
Review: This review is going to be heavily shaded by the fact that the book turned out to be nothing like what the title, dust jacket and series name implied. My impressions of what I was going to get with the book was down and dirty hard core descriptions of fighting. Real meaty descriptions that would really provide me an insight to what it was like in the thick of the battle. What were the Calvary charges like, what were the conditions in the POW camps, what was the battle field medical care like, almost an Ambrose on the Civil War. If this book tried to document what I just described then the editor must be found and prevented from ever committing this kind of crime again. I will give the editor some credit and think that maybe the Marketing department got a little ahead of themselves in describing this book as the "Saving Private Ryan" of Civil War books.

The book was made up of an assortment of chapters from many different authors. Some of the authors are historians and some are historical figures. The chapters were not in and of themselves that bad, it was just that it seams that they were the sale items of the literary world. They just did not flow together that well, were not particularly well written or exciting and covered far more issues then just combat. There were even some fictionalized accounts, did the editor forget this was a non-fiction book? There are no twos ways about it, I was disappointed in the book from about page 5 on. I am going to cut it a little slack in my rating just because I do not read a lot on the Civil War thus do not know how this book stacks up with others.

Rating:
Summary: Not Much Adrenaline Needed On This One
Review: This review is going to be heavily shaded by the fact that the book turned out to be nothing like what the title, dust jacket and series name implied. My impressions of what I was going to get with the book was down and dirty hard core descriptions of fighting. Real meaty descriptions that would really provide me an insight to what it was like in the thick of the battle. What were the Calvary charges like, what were the conditions in the POW camps, what was the battle field medical care like, almost an Ambrose on the Civil War. If this book tried to document what I just described then the editor must be found and prevented from ever committing this kind of crime again. I will give the editor some credit and think that maybe the Marketing department got a little ahead of themselves in describing this book as the "Saving Private Ryan" of Civil War books.

The book was made up of an assortment of chapters from many different authors. Some of the authors are historians and some are historical figures. The chapters were not in and of themselves that bad, it was just that it seams that they were the sale items of the literary world. They just did not flow together that well, were not particularly well written or exciting and covered far more issues then just combat. There were even some fictionalized accounts, did the editor forget this was a non-fiction book? There are no twos ways about it, I was disappointed in the book from about page 5 on. I am going to cut it a little slack in my rating just because I do not read a lot on the Civil War thus do not know how this book stacks up with others.