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Title: Surprise! The Civil War had something to do with slavery!
Review: The title sounds more provocative than the book actually is. No doubt it may lead a few people to a more up to date interpretation of the civil war era than they are used to.The most valuable aspect of the book are the annotated bibliographies following each chapter, which will be great for sophmore in college looking for a book list at 3 AM.Some readers of this book may be surprised to discover the war had something to do with slavery. Outside of the slavery issue, the author rarely spends much ink on other topics of the war or reconstruction-he barely touches on reconstruction at all, though this is supposed to be one of the points of the book.Pick it up at the library for the bibliographies, find an area of interest, grab a real book, then read on.
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