Rating: 
Summary: Huge content, remarkable events and commentary!
Review: Porter Alexander put off writing a book about his life in the US Military and also the Confederate Army for many years until he finally listened to his families pleas to put together a book. After 40 years Alexander started to re-trace his steps back in time to discuss his life and also many others. Alexander is careful and considerate to all of those he came into contact with and also very descriptive and helps historians of modern times to understand questionable events such as those like the battles of Gettysburg, Seven Days, Chancellorsville, Chattanooga and the siege of Petersburg. As much as I liked reading about Alexander's situations, I discovered that he sometimes gets off the subject matter at hand to discuss a certain individual or event that had little to do about what he was writing about. He will sometimes change the flavor of the chapter with this and then say, "I will write more when I come to that later.." Such a strange format could have been eliminated by the editor to correspond to the correct chapter of events in the book. His 'conversationalist' style of writing is almost a dictation of recorded words from the man himself without editing which can zig-zag his chapters with a multitude of information. As his writing style isn't the best, it is overshadowed by quite a lot of useful information and his thoughts are shared which brings about much needed character to his battlefield reporting. Sometimes a bit winded, Alexander tends to write about events or individuals in which he wasn't apart of. He would get into issues such as the Atlanta campaign in which he didn't take part of but wanted to share his opinion. At times I found his opinion important for events he was involved in which were especially crucial while reading about Gettysburg. Alexander does a find job discussing the events surrounding the Petersburg area that made it obvious the supply shortened Confederacy had little chance of survival. He points out very interesting ideas as he thought that surrender should have happened much earlier in 1863 or 1864 than in 1865 when everything was decimated. Alexander's book may be a very long book as it has 552 pages of content from him. It is a must read for anyone trying to understand events from a personal account standpoint. This book almost wasn't published and lingered for years before it was found and put together. Gary Gallagher has assembled quite a book here and deserves many honors for it! This book will probably always rank with the few as being the best ever and should be in anyone's Civil War library!
Rating:
Summary: Raw and Entertaining
Review: This is probably the best book I have read thusfar on Lee's campaigns. Edgar Allen Porter served as Chief of Ordinance under Johnson and then Lee and this position provided him a great perspective. Porter's recollections are captured in a raw and very compelling form in this book. The book is untainted by the often frustrating biases that modern academics tend to add to their stories. It's raw form also serves to make it very entertaining and I was quickly captivated by the story and unable to put the book back on the shelf. For people like me who have a casual interest in the Civil War, particularly from the Southern perspective, I would recommend EAP's book.
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