Don't Know Much About the Civil War

Rating:
Summary: Magnetic . . . but not necessarily 100% true north.
Review: Historians must have a point of view that accompanies the facts they present, as do newspapers or (I feel unsettled saying this)television reporters. So it is not uncommon say, in the form of the American Civil War, that Kenneth Davis has his own axe to grind. This is good, as long as the reader is left with enough evidence to differentiate between fact and opinion. Or as the old Memorex commercial with Ella Fitz spoke, "what's real and what's Memorex?"

Certainly, that this nation spoke in lofty terms and yet kept slaves is the haunting near inexplicable anomaly of our history, one that today continues to chafe, cause tears, violence and still be misunderstood. Professor Davis has an interesting quote from Freud where Freud supposedly says, "Thank you for sharing with me the high minded values and lofty standards of men. Now let me introduce you to the basement."

Unless you were lost in disreality as a youngster and your parents sent out a missing persons alert, you must of guessed somewhere along the line in school that when teachers told us that the causes of the Civil War (which for starters killed close to three quarters of a million) had everything to do with anything other than slavery, they were the ones that had lost their sense of reality. Certainly slavery was the root cause of the terrible carnage and it is certainly refreshing to have someone of Davis' stature confirm that. As Davis says, without slavery, there is no war.

Yet at some point his bias seems innundated with the good guys versus the bad guys, and we end up reading chapter after chapter describing virtually everyone north of Kentucky and all Quakers being good, and anyone south of Kentucky being stand-ins for Harriet Stowe's 'Simon Legree.' Ain't necessarily so.

Another jarring issue is the recitation of the facts before each chapter that Professor Davis wishes to present, followed by the repetition of those same facts at the end of the chapter. For many of us the textbook style of writing was something we gratefully left behind in college and high school.

Having said all that, like David Howarth in the UK, Kenneth Davis has a pleasant style of prose that gets us to read things we ought to have read earlier on. And he does it well. As Maya Angelou once wrote of Oprah Winfrey, 'I don't like all of the books she puts on 'her list,' but at least she gets people to read.'

And Kenneth Davis gets us to take a hard look at history, and how we got here. Larry Scantlebury

Rating:
Summary: A refreshing look at a terrible conflict
Review: Many who have read Kenneth Davis' books ("Don't Know Much About History" and "Don't Know Much About Geography") may have wondered when this book released how humor and light-heartedness could be used in reporting the basic truths of the Civil War, one of the darkest hours in our nation's history. Indeed, Davis does it with exquisite skill. Of course, by reading and quoting Lincoln, no doubt Mr. Davis realized, as Lincoln did, that some humor was needed to break the agony and tension surrounding this awful conflict. After reading this book, I went back to watch the Ken Burns' series on the Civil War--and noticed that this great work also used humor, especially those ironic or sardonic comments written by soldiers who were involved in the conflict firsthand.

Rating:
Summary: A solid, fairly complete Civil War book
Review: Simply put: this book is not for Civil War buffs. Most have already read through Shelby Foote's Civil War series and, put simply - there is nothing new in here. Still, Kenneth Davis' book has some great chapters on America before the war (and it shows how slavery was always a big deal in America), and it has a lot of great quotes sprinkled throughout the book. The timelines are also pretty detailed and provide some nice tidbits (like census counts). It tends to focus on the people, rather than the events, more, and the descriptions of everybody involved can get a bit boring. Still, it's a fine book for anyone who has a passing interest in the ACW (as it is pretty easy to read and understand), but not for those who are ACW buffs.

Rating:
Summary: Informative for both Civil War experts and novices
Review: The author tends to be opinionated but, at least he does not allow that to get in the way of accurately setting forth most of the key information necessary to be literate in the tragic conflict that divided our nation. Davis' approach is a question and answer format and, although I am well read on the Civil War, I found it to be informative. If you are someone who needs an entry level book on the Civil War before delving into Shelby Foote, McPherson, etc., this book will do nicely. If you plan to go no further than this book, it will help you to be at least minimally conversant in a subject all Americans should know about.

Rating:
Summary: Entertaining and Informative
Review: This book was an easy and captivating read. However, I felt that the author used a bit too much of his energy trying to convince the reader that slavery was wrong. WHO is he trying to convince? People who think that slavery is a good idea certainly do not have the mental capacity to read comics, let alone a book, so I felt that my intelligence was a bit slighted. It WAS a bit interesting to see how many synonyms for HORRIBLE that he could come up with. Overall, I did learn many things that I had never known, especially about slavery and pre-war America, so I would recommend this book. I find that there are many things that I didn't learn in school, and I suspect it's the same for alot of people, so Mr. Davis's books are a great (and welcome) idea! I just hope that people read more than this one book (ANY one book) before they decide that they DO know something about the Civil War.