![]() Goodheart’s reasons for doing so say much about the book as whole.įor one, he wants to give the United States, not the Confederate States, the initiative in the forthcoming struggle for national existence. Rather than begin his story with the firing of the first shot on April 12, Goodheart purposefully opens his book months earlier as Major Robert Anderson raises the Union flag over Fort Sumter, in Charleston Harbor, following his garrison’s secret removal to the fort in the dead of night, under the noses of hostile and heavily armed South Carolinians. Its title notwithstanding, the book is actually the history of 10 crucial months across two calendar years, October 1860 to July 1861, as the nation-soon to become two nations-teetered on and then crossed over the verge of revolution. ![]() ![]() ![]() Many already know Goodheart from his frequent-and these days, it seems, almost daily-historical pieces in the New York Times, but this book permits him to demonstrate the full range of his narrative powers.* Still, Adam Goodheart’s engrossing 1861: The Civil War Awakening will not be lost in the crowd. With the bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln’s birth in 2009 and this year’s sesquicentennial of the beginning of the conflict itself, historians have kicked into overdrive, threatening to overwhelm even the most voracious readers. We are in the midst of a perfect storm of new Civil War books. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |