★★★★★ 3
I really enjoyed the premise of this book
Format: Hardcover
It seems to me that, it was a book just waiting to be written. The author covers topics very rarely considered in any detail in other books on the Civil War. She helps cut through some of the romantic mysticism and points out reasons why, as we all suspected, that most of the South (especially the poor) were very much victims of the Confederacy. She also explains in greater detail the way of thinking of the Planter class of the Old South, which still exists today--you can even hear it in the speech of the elites of the Deep South today.
The problem I had with this book, is that the author repeats herself. Some here have said that they don't understand why people are saying that. Let me paraphrase just a couple examples of what I mean. She says , in one paragraph, that "soldiers wives started to become a political constituency for the first time" and explains how. A paragraph later, she ends the paragraph with "becoming a political entity was something new for poor white soldiers' wives". On the next page it says "for poor soldiers' wives, the Civil War was a huge burden, and they came into their own politically". In three pages she might say, "the term soldiers' wives' began to take on political meaning for the first time". Now, that is not repeating yourself with the same words, exactly. But it is repeating concepts that are not that hard to grasp. The book could have been much shorter and, IMHO, much better. I am not sure why the author feels the need to repeat certain points over and over.
Another concept "done to death" was how the Planter class had not considered that a full 1/3 of their population would not only not be soldiers, but also would , in all likelihood, be opposed to them. Now, this would seem obvious to us now, so it is important that she point it out. But once is enough. I hope I am explaining the "repetition problem" a little better here....the topic and concepts were great. Repeating concepts over and over made for, in some places, a very long read.
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Reviewed in the United States on June 6, 2013
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