Posts Tagged ‘John Keegan’
Review: Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant
In The Mask of Command, John Keegan writes that you can tell why the North won the Civil War by reading General Ulysses S. Grant’s Memoirs. That insight stayed with me for almost 16 years before I finally picked up Grant’s Memoirs late last month. For whatever reason, I had the bias that General Grant won the war through his persistence, almost bull-headedness. Reading his Memoirs, it became apparent that he won because of a towering intellect and a profound approach to leadership. Read the rest of this entry »
Review: John Keegan’s American Civil War
Besides World War II, in which many still-living men fought, the Civil War excites the national imagination as no other war does, foreign or domestic. Reasons abound for this fascination. They include: in the South, the notion of the Lost Cause can still inspire tearful reflections of the antebellum South; the long-awaited emancipation of the slaves stands a great moral moment in American history; the close proximity of most Americans to some field of Civil War battles; and the fact that Americans comprised both armies, rather than Americans fighting some distant foreigners. Read the rest of this entry »
