Negative Positive
Title: Weak thesis and no editor
Review: The author is supposed to be a leading historian and expert on slavery. And the big, deep insight that he works to develop in this text? That things got worse because the South and North distrusted each other. Oh !Aren't authors supposed to collaborate with an editor to improve their books before publication? It looks like this essential step was forgotten. The prose is profusely polluted with run-on sentences, excess words, and meandering constructs that never quite finish making their point. I was amused to see that the author is a Yale professor. He could have gone to the English department at his own school for assistance. Their freshman course is very good. He could improve his writing in just a few months of hard work.
Is the review positive or negative? 