1 comments about The Most Fearful Ordeal: Original Coverage of the Civil War by Writers and Reporters of The New York Times.

1. While the excerpts from the New York Times are valuable and instructive in themselves, this book is disappointing for what it does not have--any valuable input from McPherson. He adds about one paragraph at the beginning of each chapter, information summing up the war at that period, available in any encyclopedia. The Times text is totally un-annotated. There are no notes to identify individuals mentioned in the reports or the reporters who sometimes left their initials at the end of their text. Anyone interested in how the war was covered is left searching other sources for information.

No comments about The Last Best Hope of Earth: Abraham Lincoln and the Promise of America.

No comments about The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln (Large Print Edition): A Narrative and Descriptive Biography with Pen-Pictures and Personal Recollections by Those Who Knew Him.

No comments about Southern Outcast: Hinton Rowan Helper And the Impending Crisis of the South (Southern Biography Series).

No comments about Campaign in Western Virginia.

3 comments about Women at Gettysburg.

1. Conklin presents a well-researched view of the roles of women in the Civil War by concentrating on those who were involved in the Battle of Gettysburg. By focusing on one battle, one place, she is able to give us a broad range of what women could do to aid the war effort. Many are common women forced to open their homes to the thousands of wounded from both sides out of compassion and necessity. Some are volunteer nurses who travel with the hospitals. There are soldiers - the anonymous woman whose body was found in uniform on the ground after Pickett's Charge. There are nuns, wives, scavengers and helpmates. Women who worked along side the men to fight the respective causes. We can apply what we learn here to other places in America during this turbulent time and realize that women were more than just the girl who waited at home or the tireless nurse. They were an essential element of the war effort that has been greatly underestimated and ignored. Presented in a format that is both personal and easily accessible to all, it's a must-read!



2. An eighth grade project where students rewrote biographies of Civil War people in first person was nearly impossible for a hundred eighth graders until I discovered this book. The accounts of forty women at Gettysburg from townspeople to wives of both sides give girls an equal opportunity to relate and connect to the people and events of the Civil War. Even with the "big names" such as Harriet Beecher Stowe, Harriet Tubman, Sarah Emma Edmonds, Clara Barton, Rose Greenhow, and Mary Todd Lincoln, women doctors, a few more spies, women soldiers, abolitionist/suffragettes, there were not enough women's biographies for the females in my middle school's eighth grade.

   There is no dearth of men's biographies. I was so desperate the last time my class did a Civil War reenactment that one girl ended up as the wife of Arthur MacArthur since the encyclopedia described him as a hero of the Civil War and the father of Douglas MacArthur. We assumed Arthur was married! The girl had to extrapolate the barebones information into a story from Mrs. MacArthur's point of view as did generic nurses in the Sanitation Commission or bits gleaned from the indexes of the Civil War epics by Shelby Foote; creative but difficult for many.

   This is the second year using Women at Gettysburg, and I hope to bring the time, the people, and the events alive even better this time.




3. Unlike a previous review, there are stories in here that don't deal with Gettysburg at all. This is a "Top 40" women of the CW, not Gettysburg. And some of these women contributed nothing worth reading, let alone writing about. Poorly written.

No comments about Abraham Lincoln and a Nation Worth Fighting For.

1 comments about His Soul Goes Marching on: Responses to John Brown and the Harpers Ferry Raid.

1. the essays contained within Finkelman's books are well written and well argued, just watch out because they contain an anti-Brown slant. These works are far from impartial and for a history text, some of them don't follow the traditional road to research of primary source, secondary, and so and so forth. The text is excellent if are looking to read good essays, but they are not impartial.

No comments about "Unspoiled Heart": The Journal of Charles Mattocks of the 17th Maine (Voices of the Civil War).

2 comments about Dr. Henry R. Porter: The Surgeon Who Survived Little Bighorn.

1. I did not care to much for this book, me being a big Custer reader. The book was not worth the money for a paper back. He talks to much about his travels over seas & about the banking business in Bismark, North Dakota. He tells a lot about the early history of Bismark, which is interesting. At times a slow read.



2. This is an excellent history of a personality that survived Custer's ego at work at the Little Big Horn. I can see this history of Dr Porter as a basis for a documentary. Dr Walker's book proves there is life before and after Custer. He shows Dr Porter a man of his time, warts and all.