Rating: 
Summary: This is how history should be written
Review: Winik asserts that the month of April 1865 was the single most important month in the history of the United States due to the confluence of historical events and decisions that came with the end of the Civil War.
The decision include Lincoln's plan for a "soft" peace rather than a vengelful one. Lee's decision not to opt for guerrilla warfare but rather surrender and urge his men to become good citizens for their country (meaning the USA), Johnston's similar decision in North Carolina, the assassination of Lincoln, the uncertain rules of Presidential succession, the North's collective decision not to lash out blindly at a prostrate South in revenge for Lincoln's murder and a host of other issues.
My take: Winik is one of that new breed of historian that knows that good writing as at least as important as good research (You can't teach anything if you write poorly). Winik's synopsis of the issues of slavery and the Wilderness campaign are so good that if I ever get the chance to teach US history again I am going to copy them and hand them out to my students.
This book renewed my awe of Robert E. Lee as a man. Flawed, like all of us, he made the exact right decisions at the end. Perhaps the most interesting was in the summer of 1865 - the war was over and Lee was back in Richmond awaiting his fate. It is communion Sunday and a black man decided to assert his rights as a free man and he goes up to the alter FIRST to get communion (traditionally, blacks were last). The whole church stops. The minister is flustered at the change of social niceties. Lee gets up - goes up to the front and stands next to the man for Communion. Now, the service must go on- because you can't refuse Robert E. Lee. Together, the two men integrated the church - with no prior planning. Lee just knew that this was the way it had to be now, so get over it.
Great book. I heartily recommend it.
Rating:
Summary: Double That - 10 Stars
Review: Depending on your point of view, you may wince a little at the title of this book, but if you pick it up you won't let it out of your sight until you've finished it. The thesis is all that could have happened in that last month of the US Civil War but didn't. And all that did happen despite the odds against it. Weaved expertly throughout the thesis, you'll find some truly excellent, spell-binding descriptions and summaries of the lives of Lincoln, Grant, Lee, Sherman, Forrest, Johnston, and others; of the surrender at Appomattox, the deliberations between Sherman and Johnston, the assassination of Lincoln and the chaos and danger that ensued; of the destruction of the south, the psychological damage inflicted on the entire nation; and finally, you will come to truly understand how pivotal the Civil War was in the history of the United States -- more pivotal, probably, than any other event in our history -- and how amazing it is that we stand where we do today in spite of it. As if all this isn't enough, you'll also find an amazing summary of Thomas Jefferson's life and thought, some fascinating constitutional history, a brief and excellent history of guerilla warfare, and endless enlightening (and relevant) tidbits about lots of other historical figures of the US and the world. The book is tightly focused and sweeping all at once. In summary -- you just have to read it. Get a copy right now!
Rating:
Summary: Great read for those interested in American history.
Review: I really loved this book. I have always been interested in American history, but have never before been very educated about the Civil War. This book changed all of that. The writer does a wonderful job of making you feel as if you were there for the month of April 1865. Most importantly, Winik sheds a light on the Civil War that makes us view the war in a new and different way, showing us just how fragile the nation was for the first 100 years of its infancy. Finally, on a pure entertainment level, the book reads at times like a suspense novel. In particular, the sequence where Lee and his men are trying to outrun Grant's forces, until they arrive at Appomattox, is particularly gripping.
Rating: 
Summary: Introduction raises serious scholarship questions
Review: I was reading the introduction to Winik's book, and it seemed somehow familiar. Then, it hit me: it's almost identical to William Manchester's brilliant introduction to his book on Winston Churchill. I pulled out both books and couldn't believe how closely Winik's introduction parallels Manchester -- so much so that it raises issues of whether its plagierized. While I'm enjoying the book, it does make me wonder if other parts of the book likewise lack originality????
Rating:
Summary: Could there be anything new written on the Civil War? YES!
Review: I watched Jay Winik give a talk about April 1865 on C-SPAN's Bookspan. WOW! We just HAD to get this book after listening to this incredibly articulate author. I didn't think anyone could really put a new (non-revisionist) set of ideas about the Civil War, but Winik really focuses on the men and the time of April 1865 and how the events of that month were such a pivotal time in our history.The section on the Booth plot revealed facts I'd forgotton or didn't know (the attack also included Seward, Secretary of State and was as devastating in its time as the attack on the WTC.) The insights about Lee are fascinating. Lincoln held Lee in great esteem and Lee's gentleman-soldier qualities probably saved the United States from a protracted struggle and ultimate destruction. If Lee and his men had gone guerilla, as had been suggested to him, we might never have survived the Civil War and would have been easy pickings for European powers. Lee literally determined the course of history during that fateful month. If you are a history fan, you will of course be interested in reading this fresh view on a well-trodden subject. If you aren't normally a history fan, but have recently gotten more interested in American history and patriotic subjects due to the recent attacks on the US, you will find valuable insight into our national character and background in this book. Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: As Good As It Gets
Review: If you are seeking a first rate overview of the Civil War, its causes and its importance to America as we know it, look no further. Using April, 1865, as his focal point, Winik reaches back to the Founding Fathers and forward to what might have been had this pivotal month turned out differently. He provides excellent insights to Lincoln, Lee, Grant, Davis and other key players. He also presents historical facts that most casual Civil War observers probably don't know including the assasination conspiracy, the fact that Appomattox was not the definitive end of the war and that several attempts at secession had been made by other regions during the country's first seventy years. His depiction of the fall of Richmond is gripping.
And, in addition to the wealth of information and insight provided, this history book reads like a best selling novel!
Rating: 
Summary: April 1865--Well-Written Truths and Glaring Errors
Review: Jay Winik is an exceptional narrator. "April 1865--The Month that Saved America," his account of the closing weeks of the War Between the States, blends eloquent writing and historical insight with little-known biographical nuggets about key figures in the real-life drama: Lee, Grant, Sherman, Davis, Johnston, Forrest and others. His book would rate five stars but for its remarkable omissions and errors regarding the most pivotal event of April, 1865...the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.
Winik probes deeply into the weeks surrounding the fall of Richmond and the Grant-Lee truce at Appomattox. He credits both generals with high-mindedness, statesmanship, and with placing the welfare of a broken nation in need of healing ahead of provincial and military considerations. Likewise, he finds in Generals Sherman and Johnston, who signed an armistice in North Carolina two weeks after Appomattox, a preference for reconciliation over hatred and punitiveness. In these sections Winik's research is thorough, his analysis astute. At times his book is a page-turner.
But he fails badly regarding the assassination story. In detailing Lincoln's last full day of life, April 14, Winik omits a crucial meeting at the War Department Telegraph Office, at which Lincoln asked Secretary of War Stanton to lend him the services of Major Thomas Eckert, whom Lincoln said he had seen "break pokers over his arm," for extra protection at Ford's Theater that night. Stanton refused Lincoln's request, claiming he had "things for Eckert to do," which later proved a falsehood.
Instead, Winik asserts the opposite, that Lincoln blithely refused all offers of security help up to the very end. This is simply false, as has been detailed in many books on the assassination. Winik compounds his mistake with an even more glaring error regarding the arrests of Lewis Paine and George Atzerodt, two of John Wilkes Booth's accomplices in the abduction plot, which dominated Booth's thoughts until the very end, and the eleventh-hour assassination plot.
Winik asserts that both Paine and Atzerodt were placed under arrest on the morning of April 15. Clearly Winik's source for this is David Herbert Donald, who make the same mistake in his otherwise well-researched book, "Lincoln," published in 1995.
Paine was in fact arrested at the boardinghouse of Mary Surratt (who is never mentioned in Winik's book) on Monday, April 17; when Mrs. Surratt swore to the arresting soldiers, "Before God, I've never seen this man (Paine) before," and this was later proven false, it contributed to her becoming the first woman executed in the United States. The execution in turn added
significantly to the growth of a then-nascent 19th-century women's movement. For one of Professor Donald's stature to have made such an error is stunning; for Mr. Winik to have repeated it almost verbatim is shocking.
Mr. Winik also gives short shrift to the political dominance of Radical Republicans of the era, in particular Stanton. If April 1865 was the "month that saved America," as it arguably was, the months and years that followed, with Radicals and President Andrew Johnson fighting their petty political battles amid the growing lawlessness and carpetbagging of the Reconstruction Era, surely delayed the advance of civil rights for almost 100 years.
Rating:
Summary: Great History And Catalyst
Review: Jay Winik manages to not only convey a fairly sweeping overview of The Civil War, he also presents his narrative in a format that will likely spur the reader to additional reading on the war itself, and the major players involved. "April 1865", is largely a compendium of biographies on many people you would expect, and many others that may be new. The author also relates the very complex ending to this nation's civil war, as opposed to the singular event at Appomattox that often serves as the focal point for the close. His book concentrates primarily on the events of April 1865 which included not only the beginning of several distinct cessation of hostilities between widely separated armies, but also the assassination of President Lincoln that could not only have ignited the war once again, but also the unprecedented constitutional crisis his murder presented. So much history turns on the actions of an individual or small group. General Robert E. Lee literally was able to end the war based on his word and the respect that the other generals that lead the balance of The Confederate Armies placed in him. He easily could have sanctioned a number of alternatives that could have kept a guerilla war active for years. General Grant was also a key to the successful close of the war. This is a man who history routinely dismisses as a dunce, however his actions at Appomattox were brilliant. These two commanders set out the terms for peace on their own, a concept today that would be unthinkable. And because of the actions of these two men, the balance of the armies had the precedent to frame their terms for the end of the fighting. I will read much more about these men and this country's most destructive war. The easy answers to complex historical events have over simplified this war and so many of the activities that took place. The most poignant moment in the book occurred at the very end in Richmond, when a black man approached the rail to receive communion. Prior to the war no person of color would dare approach until all the white parishioners had taken communion. No person made a move to join this man who was exercising a new freedom he never should have been denied. One man stood and joined the first, and as he had done so many times before, Robert E. Lee led.
Rating:
Summary: enlightening
Review: Less a play-by-play of the events of that month than a character study of the players, Winik's edifying "April 1865" focuses not so much on the war itself, but what it meant to our nation, and specifically, what the last six weeks of the war did for our nation. Winik forced me to think of the war in a whole new light.
Winik has an excellent understanding of how the Civil War defined us as a nation. He shows how fragile we were at that time and how easily history could have taken an alternate path, much like similar situations of Afghanistan, Cambodia, Ireland, etc... Most Civil War curriculum leaves the reader thinking the war had a hard stop. I personally never realized how different attitudes from the various Confederate generals could have resulted in a guerilla effort that could have prolonged the rebellion even to this day. This turn of events has played out time and time again in history.
While the prose was enjoyable, I was sometimes put off with an element of his writing style where he would frequently take dives into minutiae that simply did not fit into the larger context. However, this is overshadowed by his command of the subject matter in both the historical context and the philosophical context.
For those wanting to understand the larger meaning of the war, this is one of the best books I have found.
Rating:
Summary: Start here if you have read nothing on the US Civil War
Review: Note: I've written the following with the non-American reader (or the American reader who has read very little on the American Civil War) in mind.The American Civil War and particularly its end, in both manner and means, completed that which was begun in 1776. Previously "Americans had a constitution and a country before they had a nation." (p.373) The artificial state or series of states that existed before had now been forged in battle, firstly by southern consciousness , then by northern community and finally by Lincoln's assassination which engendered remorse even from Robert E. Lee himself. Laying Lincoln to rest was counterpart to Lee's surrender at Appomattox, I'd say. It wasn't just a president that was laid to rest, but the war too; and as parcel to that, the past as well---two nations growing in consciousness and being made into one (or at least put on the path toward such). That is the importance of the Civil War. It is the focus of this book; the developments on how this war did end, with enough of its antecedent details so that it requires no previous study or knowledge of Civil War history to appreciate it. The United States was a federal structure from its inception, not a national one; as such, citizens who had cast off their Britishness had little to replace such with, thereby strenthening ones loyalties to particular states. Most citizens had little experience other than a casual association through the post office with their federal government in fact. Meanwhile, the seemingly everpresent balance mantained in Washington between the slaveholding, farming south and industrializing (more populous) north; between its aristocratic past and future self, or progressive self, was being fought out over the issue of the possible expansion or curtailment of slavery. April 1865 was the month in which this issue was conclusively decided, but the manner in which it was, and that it was at all is the focus of this enjoyable read. If you are keenly interested in the American Civil War you ought to read this book. It is worth your time; it is, moreover, even if you have but a passing interest in this subject, just enough to delve into one book on the subject---388 pages to understand the heart of the American Civil War is more than a fair bargain, I'd say. I don't think you can understand the USA if you don't know anything about this era and the manner in which a multitude of states were forged into the beginning of a nation. The battles of the Civil War make fascinating reading too (and the actual battle sites are wonderful to visit as well), but your interest would be better served by reading this book before becoming absorbed in snapshots of the war as provided by studies on Gettysburg, Lee's command, or whatever. Cheers
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