Title: Disappointing and Poorly Written
Review: I was very disappointed in this book. For readers not very familiar with this period in American history, maybe there are surprises here. But Winik covers no new ground (I'm not sure there is any new ground left in terms of books on the Civil War). I can't imagine people like me who have already read a lot about the Civil War would find any of this to be interesting. He's not a very good writer, either. He's pompous and pretentious at times--and at other times he just writes badly. For example, at one point he talks about "decapitating the seat of government." How does one decapitate (literally, remove the head from) a seat? He gets certain historical facts wrong as well. I know this was a best seller and people just drool over it, but, really, it's not a very good book. If you want to learn about this particular time in our history, you can do a lot better.
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