![]() ![]() Nor does he seek controversy in a field that often invites it. Eicher offers no significant revisions of conventional wisdom on crucial issues. His presentation of the Vicksburg campaign will serve general readers and specialists alike as an overview of one of the war's most complex operations. Eicher is no less successful on a larger scale. ![]() His accounts of Antietam and Gettysburg, Stone's River and Chickamauga, are models of clarity and cohesion, correspondingly useful introductions to the detailed monographs that often lose readers in thickets of data and analysis. He does set pieces like the attack on Little Round Top at Gettysburg and the doomed Confederate charge at Franklin with the verve of Shelby Foote or Wiley Sword. ![]() Eicher does more than hold his own in a distinguished company, establishing himself as a remarkable battle narrator. ![]() The war's causes, the armies' composition, the soldiers' motivations-all take second place to a straightforward account of the fighting of a war that has already produced shelves of excellent combat narratives by such outstanding scholars as Thomas Rhea and Harry Pfanz. Eicher ( The Civil War in Books), associate editor of North and SouthĪnd managing editor of Astronomy, manifests a corresponding degree of intellectual courage in offering this 900-odd-page operational history. In a period when the study of campaigns and battles is considered old-fashioned when not misleading, the military side of the Civil War continues to receive a higher proportion of attention than any other modern conflict. ![]()
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