Rating: 
Summary: Don't Know Much About the Civil War
Review: Agree with another reviewer Jesse Jackson had to be the author of the first part of book. Was there any one in the South that wasnt hateful? A high % of Northern soldiers were not fighting to free the negro and a even higher number of southern soldiers did not own slaves. Know wonder we still have problems if they read this.
Rating: 
Summary: Don't Know Much About the Civil War
Review: Easy read and just enough details not to bore you to death. I thought this was an excellent book!
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: An excellent overview of the Civil War
Review: I have been studying and reading about the Civil War for over 40 years, and yet I learned much from reading this book. Usually I shy away from reading overviews of the war as I find them repetitive. Instead I now read the diaries, journals and letters of the active participants. So I was pleasantly surprised to find that the author does an excellent job of explaining the politics and causes of the war without talking down to you with cutsy language as the "... for Dummies" series does. This is the text that should be used in our schools as an introduction to the most significant event in our history. The material is easy to read for the person new to the War and presented in such a manner that most readers probably will want to know more and begin to read other works on the Civil War. I now give this book as a gift to my friends and relatives.
Rating: 
Summary: Not!...
Review: I thought I would learn more secrets from this book but I was a little disappointed.
If you are looking for exotic opinions or comments about how and why things went the way it was you do not find much in this book. Dispersed into book are some memories from people involved at every walks of life which makes book a little more interesting than others. In every chapter there is a chronology of events that took place and laws that congress passed. Still looking for a better book that provides commentary rather than chronology of events.
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Summary: Sniveling condescending Left wing diatribe
Review: If you are looking for a book that does a cover to cover job of bashing western civilization with complete and obvious bias, this is it.
Rating:
Summary: Don't Know Much About The Civil War
Review: Kenneth C. Davis has done a remarkable job of making a
sometimes dull and often hard to follow subject as the Civil War
interesting and down to earth. Fancying myself a history buff I
thought I knew most of what I wanted to know about this period
in our nations great history, but the author brought out many
fasinating facts about individual players involved in this conflict that I had not known. Even my wife and nine-year-old daughter have spent many hours absorbed in these stories of bravery, cowardice, leadership, hatred, and sometimes stupidity. In fact we are currently on our second set of audio tapes because the first wore out from the repeated use.
History buff or history dope "Don't Know Much About The Civil War" will give you an exciting look at a subject that for most hasn't always been that exciting.
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.
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