Richard Hofstadter was a huge hero at my school and we all had to read him. Our intense engagement with both the history and the writing generated a love of history among many of my classmates. My Catholic high school shunned the use of high school text books and I was glad they did. I’m a sucker for anything that is called “The Oxford History of…”įorty years ago when I was a high school student we had to read the old two-volume Oxford History of the American People by Samuel Eliot Morison and Henry Steele Commager over our junior and senior years. I’ve read and have both the original and the lavishly illustrated versions.
#The illustrated battle cry of freedom series
(As an aside, like Pat Young, I was drawn in part to “Battle Cry” because of its Oxford History American history series affiliation, but “Battle Cry” stands on its own merits.) I’m sure I’m not nearly as well read as you or others on the list, but for what it’s worth, I put “Battle Cry of Freedom” at the very top of the histories I’ve read. He makes the reading itself very enjoyable (for me). Second, McPherson suggests (what for me was) an entirely new way of looking at the war and the period as a revolution against an establishment largely represented by the plantation culture and slave-holding - and I feel he achieves this remarkably well, without being preachy, or harping on the thought, or interfering with the facts themselves. McPherson doesn’t ignore the war itself, but weaves it well into the nation’s life. First, “Battle Cry” comes across as an excellent straight history of the war years, with an emphasis on the period’s political and social history. I found the history to be superb on at least three levels. Kevin, This may date me, but, yes, I read “Battle Cry of Freedom” all the way through when it came out. Part of why I resisted had to do with the mistaken assumption that Battle Cry is no more than a survey, heavy on narrative and short on analytical rigor. Of course, that did not stop me from recommending the book to others. On numerous occasions I committed myself to reading it only to be distracted by another book or even a shorter McPherson essay that summarized aspects of the larger study. I don’t mind admitting that I never really got around to reading it in its entirety until I took a graduate school class in historiography in 2004. At the time I was just beginning to explore the period and everyone recommended that I start with McPherson. At just under 900 pages it is quite demanding. While it is likely the single most popular Civil War book published in the past two decades I sometimes wonder how many people, who own it or who throw out the name in polite conversation, have actually read it in its entirety.
As we all know it was a bestseller when it was first published in 1988 and remains the go to book for those looking for a reliable survey of the Civil War Era. This past week The Daily Beast did an interview with James McPherson to mark the 25th anniversary of the release of Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era.
0 kommentar(er)
