Catton was my first serious Civil War read, and I devoured all his books, and thought them wonderful. When Foote came along, I found him a good balance to Catton, but a bit slow at times. That changed once I heard him speak, and understood his cadence. Now, as I read Foote, I hear him talking and it livens the books. McPherson is a better writer, in my opinion, than either Catton or Foote, but simply doesn’t tell enough of the story.
There was a lot more to the War than the battles (though I do love the battles - the first morning at Gettysburg and Port Republic/Cross Keys are among the most thrilling). A good background on the Confederacy, with an emphasis on civil government, can be found in Emory Thomas’s The Confederate Nation.
They’re different in ways that complement each other, IMHO. I like all three – Catton, Foote and McPherson.
Catton does have a bit of a northward tilt. He’s also a bit more big-picture than Foote. He’s also almost poetic at times, but it works, it’s not just fluff. His passage on the Swamp Angel in Never Call Retreat, for example, is almost an examination of the way technology has coarsened our sensibilities. Catton’s works are full of wonderful turns of phrase.
Foote, who leans Southern, is the detail man – not just on battles but on personalities. I imagine Foote running a gossip show and inviting Civil War figures on to dish up the juicy details. Others have noted that Union General William Nelson was killed by another Union General (curiously, named Jefferson Davis) – but Foote tells us how it happened (dueling pistols and a staircase) and includes a mysterious figure who supplied the murder weapon with the sinister murmur, “I always carry the article,” before being lost to history.
McPherson is more like a sociologist explaining what was behind public sentiment of the day (and an important source for not letting the Confederacy off the hook for slavery).
I feel richer for having read all three, and they’re my go-to resources for questions about the war.
I have not read much Foote, but his analysis in televised interviews that I’ve seen definitely tilts toward a southern bias.
I don’t think I’ve ever read a nonfiction account of the Civil War that was without some degree of bias, which is why reading multiple sources is helpful (but not foolproof) in gaining understanding.
My favorite :dubious: moment in any Civil War book was in one whose title I have forgotten, but which billed itself as having new and compelling insights into major battles. The author described one of the Confederate regiments routed by the 20th Maine during the battle of Little Round top, quoting its commander as insisting that the Yankee charge didn’t cause them to flee at all - nosirreebob, he was just ordered to take his men to another location speedily, and that he did.
I’m not sure I’m ready to swallow that one at face value.
I’ve read Foote and Catton both, and enjoyed them each for essentially all the same reasons posted upthread. As a supplementary third option, I’d add Desjardien’s These Honored Dead. The book is focussed on Gettysburg, with a bit of information about Shiloh, if I recall correctly. But what it adds is a bit of modern skepticism that I find valuable. Desjardien goes about his account almost like an archaeologist, trying to peel back the numerous layers of “spin” that have been piled atop nearly every significant event from the Civil War. A lot of what we claim to know about the battle at Gettysburg is colored by a long-after-the-fact series of PR battles. It was amazing to me how little primary evidence there is for some of the things we take as given these days.
[QUOTE=Booklist review on Amazon]
In this intriguing look at the reliability of many of the assumed truths about the Battle of Gettysburg, he does not accuse “history” or individuals of deliberate deceit. Rather, he convincingly asserts that the memories of battle participants, many of them recorded a decade later, are fragmentary and often contradictory. Faced with confusing recollections, historians often chose to select those accounts that satisfied their own preconceptions. As their accounts were written and repeated over decades, they received the aura of sanctified truth.
[/QUOTE]
Catton does have a bit of a northward tilt. He’s also a bit more big-picture than Foote. He’s also almost poetic at times, but it works, it’s not just fluff. His passage on the Swamp Angel in Never Call Retreat, for example, is almost an examination of the way technology has coarsened our sensibilities. Catton’s works are full of wonderful turns of phrase.QUOTE]
I just read that passage this past week, and you’re absolutely right. Every so often I find myself sitting still for a moment, thinking about what I just read.
Can anybody recommend any reading material about medical issues or treatment during the war, especially as relates to disease?
[QUOTE=thirdwarning]
Can anybody recommend any reading material about medical issues or treatment during the war, especially as relates to disease?
[/QUOTE]
Not a book recommend, but has anybody been to the Museum of Civil War Medicine? It’s part of the Antietam battlefield; I haven’t been there but would love to go.
The book Story the Soldiers Wouldn’t Tell: Sex in the Civil War has lots and lots of detail about sexually transmitted diseases. STD was out of control on both sides in that war (can you even begin to imagine anything much nastier than a Civil War camp follower prostitute?), so much so that the U.S. government began actively regulating and licensing prostitutes in some areas (a program that was in fact very successful at reducing the rates of new infections).
