Rating: 
Summary: WEAK NORTHEREN VIEW OF 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: Well written - Poorly edited
Review: Davis's prose is entertaining and brings the era to life with excerpts from diaries and letters of the period. However, the factual errors in the book are very distracting. I am by no means a Civil War historian, but without looking for them, I discovered at least 5 egregious factual errors in the book. (Page numbers refer to the 2001 paperback edition published by Perennial.)1. (p. 78) "...President Jackson recognized the independence of Texas in 1836, on his last day in office." Since the Presidential election was in 1836, Jackson's last day in office was in 1837. He recognized the independence of Texas in March of 1837.
2. (p. 113) "His (President Pierce) Cabinet includes War Secretary Jefferson Davis ... a former senator from South Carolina." Jefferson Davis was a senator from Mississippi.
3. (p. 139) "On December 20, 1865, a special convention met in Charleston, and South Carolina became the first state to leave the Union." 1865???
4. (p. 275) Referring to the Emancipation Proclamation: "Lincoln's proclamation, announced the previous July after Antietam..." Antietam was fought on September 17, 1862. If the Emancipation Proclamation was announced AFTER Antietam, it wasn't announced in July, and if it was announced in JULY, it wasn't announced after Antietam. The text was actually published on September 23, 1862.
5. (p. 364) "Arkansas, a slaveholding state that remained in the Union, adopts a new antislavery constitution." Arkansas did NOT remain in the Union. It seceded on May 6, 1861. A book so crammed with facts is bound to contain misstatements and typos, but a dedicated author and a conscientious editor should have caught these very obvious errors.
Rating: 
Summary: Don't Know Much About the Civil War
Review: Don't know much about the Civil War reminds me of a Berkley professor brain washing it's students with extremist positions. Why does Mr. Davis take a subjective leftist view on this era? You only have to read any of his other books to know why. He is extremely liberal. If you are fresh out of a large University, you'll love this book. If you are tired of the rhetoric of the left you will find yourself somewhat repulsed. Not by the content, but by the strong negative tone inflections Davis places on America and its history. A history lesson, whether taught to you or your kids, must be objective facts, not a persuasive pitch of your own personal hatred. Davis sell book based on this premise.
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: Learning about the Civil War
Review: Excellent book giving a thorough background in a sequential format. This proved to open portions of my thought process that had not been explored. I would highly recommend this book for anyone interested in obtaining information that has been cross referenced by the author.
Rating:
Summary: Easy to use format
Review: For antyone who is not literate about the Civilk war, this book provides the essentials in an easy to follow question and answer format. I am well read on the subject and I feel that Davis does a creditable job of providing good basic information on the conflict. A plus is that he devotes significant coverage to the events leading up to the war, including the famous compromises. The book is not exhaustive but it uis a good baisic text for those who know little about the Civil War.
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: Concentration wavering reading?!?
Review: I cannot help but pick up books about the "War between the States". As an amateur expert on this war, my take on this book is that it was interesting in parts and boring in others. I thrive on information but not the lengthy version that Davis seems to prefer. Short spurts appear often enough to make the book enjoyable. His information is credible and the first hand accounts that are interspersed thruout are fun. I guess my take is basically, thank god for my speed-reading abilities.
Rating:
Summary: Mix of well known facts and propaganda...
Review: I do not consider myself a War Between The States' expert 'tho I study it for 8 years. See, the number of books that deals with WBTS already more that one million. So what's a new book could give? As it appears, nothing. Frankly I thought this book would be a valuable addition to my library. Instead won't even give it to nobody to read. After reading this book one can think that he/she knows everything about what they call Civil War. Davis wants to persuade everyone that war was about slavery. It's the main idea of this book. As a historian, I know that history is nothing that a heap of events and consequences ALWAYS INTERPRETED by someone (who, as a rule, has strong voice, skilled throat and enormous energy to shout his/her opinion on every corner). Davis' book is the brightest exampe. In his introduction (page xix) he openly says :"Even so the War was about slavery" (true meaning of this is "I don't give a damn everyone says it was a War about the Union, I think it was a War about slavery and I will say it everywhere and if you don't like me then you are /racist, dumbhead, redneck etc./"). This book is too much opinionated. Besides it spotted by so-called political correctness (for me it's either a form of delirium tremens or double-standard lie). Shortly - if you are Civil War buff you'll find nothing new here. If you are just a beginner in CW I would recommend to read it only comparing with other CW books. In my not so humble opinion Davis' book is a brightest example of mix of well known facts and propaganda... (The same way communist leaders all over the world write their books and speeches. In Soviet Union if it still exist his book would be a real best-seller, forewarded with a letter from General Secretary of Communist Party). On the other hand I think it is useful to have this book/ Because it's the true example "How-To-Write-A-Useless-Book". Indeed Davis doesn't know much about Civil War.
Rating:
Summary: Contains intriguing facts; exposes southern revisionism.
Review: I don't pretend to be an expert on the Civil War, but I certainly find it interesting that negative reactions to Mr. Davis's book (which I found entertaining, informative, and thought-provoking; I learned a lot) tend to be based upon his depiction of the South as the unwarranted cause of the war and as the bastion of slavery. Yet no one seems interested in refuting the statements on which he bases this perspective. The pro-slavery atrocities of the Confederate states are well-documented, their decision to secede clearly based upon the slavery issue (other "states' rights" issues were raised before this, and they did not lead to secession), and the South's century-long reluctance to deny African-Americans basic rights undeniable. So what is the agenda here? If the Civil War wasn't about slavery, then why was the Confederacy so devoted to it? Why are so many pro-Confederates radical racists? Tell me, people, what is the deal? I _live_ in the South; I was _born_ here and I haven't managed to escape yet. I have no problem accepting that, in the Civil War, the Confederate States were the bad guys---the ur-Nazis, if you will. Pro-Confederates are drawing too many bad influences to be taken at face value. The South seceded out of a childish and vile need to continue to enslave others; the South was wrong, and I have yet to see any convincing evidence otherwise.
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