A Soldier's General: The Civil War Letters of Major General Lafayette McLaws

Rating:
Summary: A stunning best-seller, if written by a General today
Review: Collections of letters reach a special audience. Such collections may occasionally feel tedious, but they open a window onto the personality and the ordinary details of everyday life, often of exceptional people. This book appeals to another subset of readers - those with a passion for understanding the American Civil War.

John Oeffinger has given us a wonderful introduction to a military leader whose name most Americans have never heard. Lafayette McLaws' pensmanship is the primary reason these letters have taken so long to make their way into print. Examples of his writing atest to Oeffinger's task in bringing the letters to readers, at long last.

McLaws was a military man on the losing side of a war fought over slavery, but we see here an individual who lived by a sense of duty and citizenship, who openly expressed his love and concern for family and the education of his children. There are many touching thoughts written into words and expressed by a man often absent from family life by the call of his profession.

If this book had been written by a military leader of our own time, it would be a best seller.

Rating:
Summary: A stunning best-seller, if written by a General today
Review: Collections of letters reach a special audience. Such collections may occasionally feel tedious, but they open a window onto the personality and the ordinary details of everyday life, often of exceptional people. This book appeals to another subset of readers - those with a passion for understanding the American Civil War.

John Oeffinger has given us a wonderful introduction to a military leader whose name most Americans have never heard. Lafayette McLaws' pensmanship is the primary reason these letters have taken so long to make their way into print. Examples of his writing atest to Oeffinger's task in bringing the letters to readers, at long last.

McLaws was a military man on the losing side of a war fought over slavery, but we see here an individual who lived by a sense of duty and citizenship, who openly expressed his love and concern for family and the education of his children. There are many touching thoughts written into words and expressed by a man often absent from family life by the call of his profession.

If this book had been written by a military leader of our own time, it would be a best seller.