Rating: 
Summary: As good as it gets
Review: This book will be the standard one-volume history on the war for many years to come. If I were teaching a college class on the Civil War and its causes, this would be my textbook.
Rating:
Summary: Required Reading
Review: Fortunately and unfortunately this was the first Civil War book that I read. I was fortunate in that it is a well written historical study of the Civil War and the political landscape during the conflict.McPherson has written a book that immediately engages you and doesn't let go until the end. While there are other notable and lengthier studies, see Foote's narrative, the author has taken a four year conflict and presented it in one volume. I am asked time and time again to recommend a book on the Civil War and this is always the first recommendation. The unfortunate part is that after reading this book I was hooked on studying the Civil War and have spent countless $$$ on expanding my library on the subject.
Rating: 
Summary: Fatally Flawed
Review: Don't let the Pulitzer Prize and the Princeton credentials dazzle: this book has a fatal weakness. McPherson shows flashes of brilliance in his thinking and his writing. The content is sensibly balanced and tastefully presented. The first half of the book covers events before the Civil War, yet the ominous pre-war political crosscurrents are interesting reading. The underlying problem is the relativistic intellectual framework McPherson applies to his work. His post-modernist lens distorts virtually all of his thinking. Thus, the South is viewed as "paternalistic". Lincoln's Christian perspectives are ignored. The central role of American churches in abolitionism is left out (intentionally?). In other words, the scholarship often gets lost in left-leaning ideogical distortions. Even more strange, we get pschyoanalysis of leading Civil War political and military figures presented as if it is objective research. This is politically correct balderdash and McPherson and the Pulitzer Prize Committee should know better. If you subscribe to the mythology of contemporary American liberalism, here's another slanted product from academia. But if you're a student of real history look elsewhere.
Rating: 
Summary: Pretty good one-volume history of the war
Review: This book is a good one-volume introduction to the "Second American Revolution", or the Civil War. The author's theme is how the war changed everything! He writes that the war was brought on by a political revolution in the urban, industrial North, which was too radical for the more traditional, agarian South, thus the South decided to stage a "pre-emptive counterrevolution." The author shows how technology and society changed as a result of the war. There was a great deal of explanation of the Virginia and the Tennesse Valley fronts, but also a little of the border state front and the Atlantic blockade. I thoroughly enjoyed the authors take on the international politics (UK, France, Mexico, and Canada)of the war, something I have always been interested in but never really read anything about. The author has a clear Northern bias, which others on this page have complained about. Frankly, I worry when an history author's biases are not clear at the beginning. Anyone proporting to write an unbiased history is a FRAUD and a LIAR! We were not there in 1860, the study of history is our interpretation of events-biases are absolutely necessary. While I find the Confederacy more interesting than the Union, I do not mind the Northern biases at all. (I live in the South, but was born in the North, and none of my ancestors came to the US until after the war) I do have a few complaints however, the first two are small, the third I think would have added to the author's thesis, while the fourth and fifth may be related to the author's bias. 1- I wish the author would have spent a bit more time with the wars out west. Examples- Stand Wattie's Cherokee Greys, the battles in New Mexico and Arizona, and the way the Lakota Sioux used the war as a spark to begin fighting for their rights/independence in Minnesota and the Dakotas. 2- I wish more would have been done with the battles on the high seas, the USA/CSA naval battle off the coast of Cherbourg France for example. 3- I would have liked more discussion of the activities of the war time Congress that were not directly war messures. The trans-continental railroad, homestead act, land-grant college act, reorganization of the national financial system, the first income tax, increased protective tariffs, emphasis of national authority over state government, to name a few. These are all part of the political revolution that the Southerners were fearful of. If, as the author states, Southern secession was a counterrevolution against Northern radicalism, greater empahasis on these "radical" measures would have bolstered his case. Pro-Southern readers would argue that the author focuses too much on slavery while ignoring these issues. There may be some truth in that, but he does not ignore them like a HS textbooks does. However, more explanation would be useful to the author's case. 4- How come the author goes into more detail on the Richmond bread riot than the New York City Draft Riot? The Richmond riot was FAR,FAR,FAR less violent, and I think its far less important overall. The NYC draft riot was the largest instance of urban unrest in our history. There were other places too where the author tried to paint the North in a better light than history indicates with regards to the draft, suspension of civil rights, supression of anti-war movement, etc. 5- The author got me wondering. If conditions in Union prison camps were so much better because the South did not have the food and supplies to take care of its citizens, much less enemy prisoners; why were the death rates he gave for Union camps only a few percentage points lower than Confederate camps: CSA's Andersonville 29%, USA's Elmira 25%? What was the Union's excuse? The author does not even spend a sentance on Union camps. I recommend this as a detailed introduction to the war. Read it, then if you want more details, seek out a book specific to a given issue of the war. There are many good ones.
Rating:
Summary: A must-have
Review: There are so many books about the Civil War that concentrate on the tactics and strategies of the battles that were fought. "Battle Cry of Freedom" is different in that it describes the political history of the war, how it arose and how it progressed as a conflict between societies, not just between armies. The actual conflicts are secondary in this book, with Gettysburg given only a few pages for example. I've read many histories including Foote's trilogy, but this is the only one that treats the war as a political struggle rather than a military one. If you have not read it, go no further. Buy it now.
Rating:
Summary: outstanding
Review: This book is truly and undoubtedly a classic of Civil War history, and although it consists of only one volume (860 pages of text can hardly be called "slim," however), Battle Cry of Freedom surely ranks up there with the legendary works of Foote, Catton, and Freeman. As a book for the beginning Civil War buff or for anyone desiring a broad look at the entire era, I can imagine no better starting point. And McPherson's brush is, indeed, very broad. He covers the political and legal, the economic and social, the military and diplomatic aspects of the period (roughly 1846-1865)--swiftly because of the nature of the book but still insightfully and thoughtfully. The war is similarly treated in all its dimensions: technological developments; hospitals and nurses; prisons; tactics and strategy; generals and privates; logistics; terrain and weather. In one area, though, the book is lacking. With all the attention McPherson gives to the twenty years preceding the war, I was mildly disappointed by his cutting off with Lincoln's assassination. Even if he did not want to cover Reconstruction in too much detail (perhaps leaving it for the next volume in the series), there is still a ton of fascinating details he could have inserted, such as Stanton's assuming de facto leadership of the country before Johnson's swearing-in. But this diminishes the book, so wonderful in every other regard, only slightly. To all this, McPherson brings a talent for telling a story and adds the occasional witticism. (I loved some of the Lee-as-fox comparisons: "Like a rabbit mesmerized by the gray fox, Hooker was frozen into immobility..." McPherson did seem a bit too fond of discretion-is-the-better-part-of-valor explanations--at least three of them by my count.) His transitions between chapters, paragraphs, and topics are simply excellent, even between seemingly disparate subjects; one topic flows effortlessly and seamlessly into the next. The narrative of Gettysburg is extremely well done. McPherson has his preferences and opinions. Lincoln favors well. He is not, though, beyond McPherson's criticism. The president's questionable or illegal infringements on civil rights receive ample treatment, but so, too, do similar actions in the South (suspension of habeas corpus, imposition of martial law). Grant also is treated positively, as are Sherman and Sheridan--all of whom figure into McPherson's argument that the Western theater was pivotal, both in the military gains there and in the fine generals it helped produce. McClellan comes off quite poorly, not entirely without reason, as something of a megalomaniac with a messiah complex. The historian must inevitably weigh in on these issues and others, and just as inevitably clash with others who believe otherwise. But for the most part, this book is about the story of this nation-saving and nation-defining conflict, interestingly and insightfully told. McPherson's book is clearly one for the ages.
Rating: 
Summary: Horribly boring
Review: Worst book ever as comic book would have said
Rating:
Summary: Why did the Civil War Happen?
Review: Many books describe the battles and events of the Civil War. Other books are about the well-known people who played roles in this bloody and terrible war. But Battle Cry of Freedom helps you understand the reasons for the war, the pressures that led up to it. Like the art of Jacob Lawrence, which captures the horror of this period in American history, McPherson gives us a picture of the conflicting beliefs and values of the mid-ninteenth century that led a country to nearly split apart. What an irony that the Yankees thought the war would be over soon! What a tragedy that Lincoln did not live to implement a more gentle reunion of North and South! In the pages of this book you feel the drama of those years and gain a better understanding of the flow of events that brought us to today. Was the Civil War about slavery? Was it about union? Was it about urban vs. rural? The answer is complex, and nothing makes it more understandable than this detailed, well-written look into those turbulent times.
Rating:
Summary: The Final Word
Review: All I have to say is that this is THE! Civil War text. If you ever take a class on the civil war anywhere chances are that this book will be used, that doesn't mean that this book is boring. This is the type of book that you can read at 3 o'clock in the morning and still not want to put it down. Truly THE ULTIMATE Civil War text.
Rating:
Summary: Much more than the American Civil War
Review: This book is even more than the "Civil War Era." It is about technological singularity and what that can mean for an entire nation. We are treated to a thorough examination of the South's attempt to secede and preserve the way of life that existed at the founding of the United States. The American industrial revolution altered lifestyles--and perceptions--in the North. In essence a new culture, a new nation, emerged in the North as people adapted to the way of life that industry required, a culture that Southerners rejected. What followed was essentially a high-tech war (for the time) that foreshadowed events that would become the "rule" during later conflicts, things such as trench warfare during World War I. McPherson's narrative is a lesson that new technology can bring more than a higher standard of living--it can alter an entire culture, and do it in a way that results in massive conflict. The writing and thorough examination of the subject approaches genius. One aspect of the antebellum United States that seemed to lack decent treatment was the perception--especially among the founding fathers--that a state's right to secede was "a most valuable, most sacred right," this even according to Lincoln in an 1848 speech. This idea of the right-to-secede stemmed from the very fact that the United States was founded on the basis of separating from a tyrannical nation (Britain), a reality that was not lost to the founding fathers, but seemed to fade as they passed away. Secession, especially the threat of, was seen as one of the best means to limit the power of the central government. I would have liked much more discussion on this aspect of U.S. history, and how Lincoln seemed to switch his views about the subject as the years of the Civil War approached.
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