No comments about "The Devil's to pay", General John Buford, USA.

5 comments about Rebel Private: Front and Rear: Memoirs of a Confederate Soldier.

1. This book is a very enjoyable and powerful read. The "War of Northern Aggression" has never seemed such a real happening to me before. It makes well-known battlefield names come alive. Fletcher was a very practical, down-to-earth man and the reader is exposed to the practical everyday concerns of a Confederate soldier. The plight of the wounded is nearly felt by the reader. Fletcher candidly discusses taking food from women and children in Union territory and scavenging the dying. He even expresses regret that he had refrained from shooting an enemy soldier because he appeared very young and he wonders if it hurt his nation's cause. There are very exciting stories about being captured and escaping from a moving prison train. After the war, he heard a North Carolina soldier ask Fletcher's Texas cavalry unit if they had any bacon. When one answered yes, the man said "Grease and slide back into the Union." After thinking about it a while, Fletcher saw the wisdom in that statement and did just that. He became a highly successful lumber entrepreneur. I highly recommend for students of military or Southern history or anyone who likes true adventures.



2. An outstanding view of the War Between the States from the point of view of an "ordinary" soldier.



3. Perhaps if the writer had put his thoughts to paper soon after the events described he might have remembered a few details! We barely find out anything about his weapons, his leaders, his thoughts on seccession etc... While the small details of camp life and escaping are interesting a better book on that subject is Prison Pen.



4. Excellent, first had observations made by a common private in during the Civil War. The author IS NOT a professional writer. This makes it all the more valuable. The author is not writing the book to entertain, or to pass along old, gory war stories. This is a story by a simple man trying to tell us his point of view, simple as that. This account is quite valuable to anyone interested in the study of this horrible conflict. Recommend it's reading and recommend you add it to your collection. I do wish there had been more like this one.



5. This is a good, first hand account of the life of a Confederate soldier. Fletcher writes of only what he seen during the war. The only judgement he cast is upon his leaders actions at Gettysburg. This book will definitely change your perspective on the life of a common soldier.

1 comments about Recollections and Letters of General Robert E Lee.

1. This is an interesting book. Not really a biography, it consists mostly of a large number of letters written by Robert E Lee to various people throughout his life, connected by his son's description of events in Lee's life. Those who are looking for detailed descriptions of Civil War battles will be disappointed -- the book focuses mostly on Robert E Lee as a person. Lee was a complex and sometimes contradictory person -- for instance, he was opposed to secession, but he agreed to lead the Army of Northern Virginia when he was asked. If you are interested in Lee just as a General, this book probably isn't what you're looking for. But if you're interested in Lee as a person, this is a fascinating description, largely in his own words.

5 comments about Few Returned: Twenty-Eight Days on the Russian Front, Winter 1942-1943.

1. Corti who was a twenty-one year old artillery officer on the Stalingrad front, was part of the Eighth Italian Army that was cut off when Zhukov sent in the pincers that surrounded the Sixth German Army. His group was in a pocket northeast of Stalingrad that was made up of Italian and German soldiers.
   
   Out of the 30 thousand Italians who held the front at the Don north of Stalingrad, less than four thousand made it out of the pocket and up to one thousand of those died from their wounds and exposure. Corti doesn't pull any punches as to what happened in the pocket or who was to blame.
   
   Many of the Italians had just come to the front over the last two weeks. They were totally unprepared for what was going to become a retreat over one hundred kilometers while constantly under Russian fire. They had to walk most of the way in inadequate uniforms and boots while the Germans requestioned horse and mules and sleds for their own use.
   
   Corti speaks of how the Germans were much better organized and kept their military lines-or-command intact, whereas the Italians in many cases became a mob without any reason or understanding of the situation. At times no one was in charge of taking care of the wounded or giving out provisions. While the German Luftwaffe dropped food and ammunition by parachute, the Italian Air Force was conspicuous by their absence.
   
   The story is straight forward and brutal. Corti does not try to make excuses for anyone (including himself) in the treatment of fellow soldiers or of civilians. It was survive at any cost.
   
   Zeb Kantrowitz



2. I have always been interested in the Second World War and especially the little known battles and actions of that war.
   Lately; I have delved into the Italian part in this conflict and the tragic consequences to their brave soldiers.
   "Few Returned", gives you a first hand glimpse of what it was like for man, pack animals and equipment, fighting and struggling to survive on the Eastern Front.
   You will wonder how anyone returned from that winter retreat.
   The author Eugenio Corti also gives the reader a good feel for the national differences between the Italians, Germans and Russians.
   Combat is sporadic throughout the retreat, but again Corti gives you a good feel of how it was for all sides.



3. This book is different from others in that it does not glorify War,it does not tend to over exaggerate what happened in battle, it does'nt even try to blow up the truth with nonsensical war heroics recounted ( like many german or British books, dare I say).
   Its a straight forward recount in diary form of how onw Italian officer and his brave troops dared all to fight back the Russians, the bitter cold and the odds of making it back on foot without decent rations , heavyweapons or transportation which were rendered useless in battle or just plainly nevr had their ammo resupplied by the faster retreating better equiped self serving Nazis.
   It si common for the uneducated armchair historian or plainly ignorant war hobbyist to brand the Italians as cowards, however when one delves deeper into the actualities of WW2 and gets to the events as they really happened unaltered by propaganda and rascist reporting then we really see that the Italians which were up against it from the start, put in as brave a performance as any fighting man could and beyond that in many a case.

   I recommend this book to all for the honesty and open portrayal of the horrors of War and the true nature of men when faced with the harshness and desperation of survival.
   Its not a novel as anyone who's half literate can plainly see, but a diary of man brave man and his troops that fought their way thru the russians, the elements and evn the Nazis cruelty to survive!
   Enjoy the read! A must have for the war historian at heart.




4. .. I think that one of the "soldier view" of the whole Eastern Front history from axis side is "The Sergeant In The Snow" by Mario Rigoni Stern.



5. Above all, this book is a record of one man's experience as an Italian soldier fighting on the Eastern Front during World War II against Russia. More specifically, it is about a few horrible weeks of fighting and retreating. It is *not* a story or novel, really, but almost like an after action report. The book contains the author's feelings and some of what he saw, but you get the distinct sense while reading this book that he wrote it as a record of what he saw and did, and as an homage to his friends who never made it out of Russia, but not as an attempt to write a story. The author never really tries tying the events into a broader context or explaining the full experiences he had on the Eastern front; it is just a snap shot of a limited time frame, and only limited snapshots even within that time frame.

   This book is not a blow by blow recitation of combat. While the author is clearly involved in a number of intense fights, both before and during the period covered in the book, we never really hear about it. It's almost as if he is trying NOT to make this a book about combat. If there is an engagement we hear of the troops forming up for it, a sentence or two about the fight, and then more pages about the aftermath - the wounds, the dead.

   The most insightful and remarkable aspects of this book to me are: 1) the ability of the author to show us the horrors of war; 2) the brutality on both sides; and 3) how horrible the Nazis were even to their allies. I take each in turn.

   1) This book makes very clear how much human suffering war brings with it. Through its dry, almost camera-like recitation of horror after horror (friends freezing to death in front of him, morter shells cutting people in two) we can almost imagine what it must be like to be walking through a combat zone strewn with bodies and wounded men and animals. We also see how war turns honorable, good men into self-interested beings centered only on survival. The author, for example, is clearly a brave, honorable, educated man and officer. We watch as his pride in being an officer and an Italian soldier slowly gives way to self-survival. We also watch as this man with deep loyalty to his unit and his friends gives way (as we all would, I'm sure) to self-interest. Fascinating.

   2) Suffice it to say that the book makes clear how brutal all sides were in this war: Soviets and Nazis alike commit brutal, heartless acts.

   3) The savagery and callousness of the Nazis towards their allies is stunning. While paying homage to the combat skills of the Nazis, the author shows clearly how the Nazies treated the Italians serving and dying in their cause only slightly better than their hated enemy the Soviets. For example, we read of a time when, during the retreat, the Nazis held up thousands of Italians, subjecting them to withering small arms and artillery fire from the Russians for hours, in order to clear mud off of German trucks. We see how Nazis failed to share food, information or shelter with their "allies." We see Germans shooting at wounded Italians (their allies, remember!) who dared to try and get a ride on a German vehicle.

   This book is somewhat dry, somewhat repetititious, but worth a read for those wanting a sense of what the winter retreat was like for an Italian soldier serving in WW2's horribly grueling East Front.

2 comments about Abraham Lincoln: The Observations of John G. Nicolay and John Hay.

1. The book was very short and only covered areas of limited interest on Lincoln's Presidency. Beside other titles on Lincoln that I have bought this was a major disappointement. There was no flow of quality prose to create interest in specific story lines which were too sketchy. The book's objectives were too limited from the outset and it's main merits are that it may serve as a useful reference book for later purchases. It will do little to add or detract to the legacy of Lincoln.
   Lorenzo
   Ireland



2. A book for the person with an existing fair understanding of the White House years of Abraham Lincoln.
   
   Professor Burlingame provides a great service to those of us who are keenly interested in this great president, but who do not have the time to read the imposing and very dated ten-volume history produced by his two close aides, Nicolay and Hay. This book fills a specific void; it certainly should not be confused with a full biography.
   
   While it is surprising that so little was directly said by Nicolay and Hay about their chief in their history, I am happy that Professor Burlingame did the hard work of mining its ten volumes for the benefit of lazy readers like me.

5 comments about Inside Hitler's Bunker: The Last Days of the Third Reich.

1. Inside Hitler's Bunker is a good introduction to the final days of the Second World War from the Nazi perspective - a horrific denoument to a great crisis in world history as Hitler and his cohorts, realising defeat was inveitable, still pursued a grand Wagnerian ending until the last. Berlin was in ruins, thousands were dying by the day, the Red Army were marauding in from the East. And Hitler, a 'cake gobbling wreck', shattered by events, bloodily ended it all along with his wife.
   
   This is a short, journalistic history, mainly from secondary sources, with a good deal of speculative rumination. It is not a deep scholarly book. It will appeal as an introduction to the topic, interspersed with some interesting pictures of the war ravaged Berlin, and inside the Bunker itself.



2. James O'Donnell's "Bunker" is the authoritative history of the Fuhrerbunker. Even Mr. Fest acknowledges that in his Bibliography notes. "Inside Hitler's Bunker" is cursory, superficial and unoriginal and it escapes me that there can be any reason this book was written except to make a quick buck off of unwary readers. It's a joke. Avoid it at all costs.



3. Fest's haunting description of the last days of the Third Reich is a magnificent accomplishment. Despite its brevity, Fest manages to weave larger historical issues into a narrative full of surreal, compelling details about the Nazis' end. There are the evocative stories of Berlin in turmoil: SS patrols summarily hanging whoever they felt was a shirker, citizens struggling to survive in the shelled-out ruin of a city, the Soviet encirclement growing ever closer. Meanwhile, inside the Hitler's bunker, the story of delusion and denial grew ever more fantastical -- Hitler commanding generals to counterattack the Russians with army units existing in his imagination, and growing more and more furious with their "betrayals" as the Russian advance still came on.
   
   The story arrives ultimately at the Russian approach to the bunker and the suicides of Hitler, Eva Braun, and the inner circle. Their grimly nihilistic end, burned in a trashheap, paralleled their desire for the same fate for Germany. Hitler wanted Germany to go down with him. That so many in Berlin actually did follow him in suicide, or fighting the Russians to the end against suicidal odds, seems now almost too bewildering to believe. Fest's book is bleak, but in a straightforward journalistic style argues why the end in the bunker was the culmination of Hitler's theatrical, nihilistic vision.



4. I wish that I had read the negative reviews of this book and avoided it. This is a very poorly done account of Hitler's final days in the bunker. The book is poorly written, lacks linear progression, and provides an erratic treatment of the subject. The text itself is cobbled together in piecemeal fashion from other books on the subject - there seems little original here. Quotes about Hitler are often made without attribution leaving the reader to wonder whose opinion was being posited. Fest writes pages and pages of filler material consisting of his own amateur psychoanalysis of Hitler which adds nothing to the record and further sidetracks this work.
   
   If you wish to read an engaging and informative account of Hitler's final days, skip Fest's book and read instead the book written by Hitler's secretary Traudle Junge's or Ian Sayer and Douglas Botting's book The Women Who Knew Hitler which chronicles Hitler's last days extremely well.



5. While not as thorough as Anton Joachimstahler's or James P. O'Donnell's works on Hitler's last days, Fest provides a good introduction to the last month of Hitler and Nazi Germany's lives. The book somewhat bounces around between Hitler, the Soviet onslaught, and conditions in Berlin, but Fest does a pretty good job of balancing these and writing a readable book. Again, not the most detailed of accounts, but a good intro.

2 comments about Journal, 1955-1962: Reflections on the French-Algerian War.

1. First, I will comment on the book itself from an American point of view. The book is not easy to read because it is not a book: it is the author's journal he kept during the French Algerian War. Knowing that still, his journal entries, which at the beginning were frequent and detailed, were focused on keeping track of who was killed, tortured or who was doing the killings. It was as if the author, Mr. F.(his notation of using people's initials to hide their identity from I suppose the French secret police), was keeping a testimony of the murders occurring all around him as evidence. This makes for dull reading; however, given the events of 9-11, I made a valiant effort to immerse myself into the author's mind and try to understand this incredibly brutal civil war.

   (...)




2. There are a few important works on the Algerian Civil War available for the English reader. Franz Fannon, Alistair Horne's history, the film "Battle of Algiers, and recently Feraoun's diary are the ones that readily come to mind. Feraoun was a western educated Algerian and well accquainted with the French. His desire for an independent Algeria was strong, but tempered by a strong sense of historical reality. He reveals the day to day impact of the violence. It is in this respect that the work is most moving, and reveals the senselessness and degradation that occurs to all people involved, Feraoun eventually a victim himself. An essential view of the psychological costs of guerrilla and anti-colonial war.

No comments about Andrew Johnson: The American Presidents Series: The 17th President, 1865-1869 (The American Presidents).

1 comments about The Autobiography of General Ulysses S Grant: Memoirs of the Civil War.

1. General Grant's firsthand accounts of the campaigns that won the Civil War. Grant discusses his strategy and tactics, accompanied by maps and detailed descriptions of his actions. An indispensable source for anyone who is interested in the history of the Civil War.

5 comments about Touched by Fire: The Life, Death, and Mythic Afterlife of George Armstrong Custer.

1. I just re-read this biography, after several years, and I was reminded again what a great book it is. Barnett's Custer is not Custer-the-awful or Custer-the-hero -- but Custer-the-human. She is solid on her sources, and tells a story about Custer that develops his relationship with his wife in ways that I find fascinating. You get a sense from this about a person who was three-dimensional. Her description of the battles are solid, though if you want more detail, you will need to find that in other books. If you want to learn about the person behind the fighting, though, this is the book for you.



2. I agree with Bob Reece on that score. At the time _Touched By Fire_ was published, we also saw publication of another Custer biography by Jeffery Wert. Barnett's bio was by far and away the better of the two. Custer comes to life for modern readers in a way few authors have made him come alive. My personal favorite Custer "bio" is still Evan Connell's _Son of the Morning Star_, but Barnett's work is also one that I refer to regularly.

   Bob Reece spends a lot of his review addressing the issues raised by "a reader from San Francisco" covering the "experiment" that was illustrated in the A&E (and possibly the History Channel as well) documentary in "The New Explorers" series. The New Explorers documentary was seriously marred, I think, in swallowing hook, line, and sinker author Robert Nightengale's almost paranoiac ravings against Benteen and Reno. Any reader interested can refer to Nightengale's _Little Big Horn_ for details there. What I want to note about the "experiment" mentioned is an interesting fact, namely that it appears that those in the Reno-Benteen contingent who claimed to hear firing in the distance were also those who were younger officers who were not Civil War veterans. It is very probable that Reno and Benteen simply did not hear any firing in the distance owing to partial hearing loss induced by their Civil War service.

   But that's irrelevant to Barnett's biography. Don't ignore Connell's _Son of the Morning Star_ in your Custer researches, but for an excellent introduction to the life of one of the most colorful Army officers in U.S. History, you can't beat _Touched by Fire_.




3. I adamantly disagree with the reviewer, below, from San Francisco. This is one of the best biographies of Custer's life with his wife, Libbie. Their relationship comes to life in Barnett's book.
   
   The reviewer mentions the "New Explorers" program on the History Channel and its reference to Reno and Benteen not coming to Custer's aid when they knew he was under attack was a sham to historical research. Frankly, I was embarrassed for the History Channel when I viewed this program. It has always been understood by historians of the Battle of the Little Bighorn that the men under Reno and Benteen's command heard firing to the north coming from the Custer Battalion. Reno had just got whipped soundly by the Sioux and Cheyenne warriors in the river valley forcing him to retreat to the high bluffs overlooking the river (now known as the Reno/Benteen defense site); it was from this position that they heard firing to the north. Reno had lost over 30 men during the valley fight and retreat. His men were demoralized and there were many men wounded. Custer was five miles to the north beyond the hills; it might as well been a 100 miles. The "New Explorers" premise is that it's some great mystery whether the soldiers' heard gun firing or not. So, they conduct a makeshift "experiment" with a tape recorder on the Reno/Benteen defense site. Over the hills, to the north, they have a few guys waiting to fire some carbines. So, the guys with the tape recorder are talking through walkie-talkies to the men who are waiting to fire their carbines and they begin to countdown to zero. At zero, the men fire their carbines and it's recorded on the tape. Wow! The "researchers" got all excited and said this was proof that Reno heard the firing and, because, he didn't come to Custer's aid, Custer met his death. What a joke! This "experiment" was conducted on a quiet afternoon. The "researchers" didn't take into consideration that the Reno/Benteen site, during the battle, would not have been so quiet. Most importantly, their premise is nothing new. It's their conclusions that are subjective and childish.
   
   Barnett doesn't stoop to such stupidity like these "researchers." She portrays the life of Custer and Libbie as one of genuine caring. After Custer's death, Libbie resolves to spend the rest of her life protecting her husband's reputation. Libbie was ahead of her time; she was a strong, independent woman who faced all kinds of hardships with courage and strength.
   
   And, Custer? He was a man like some people today. He was ambitious and wanted to move forward with his career, yet he didn't let his ambitions affect his decisions on the battlefield.
   
   Once you start reading TOUCHED BY FIRE, you will find it hard to put down. It is a moving story.



4. Sometimes overlooked in this book are Louise Barnett's fascinating sidebars on women on the frontier. She could make another book out of her research in this area.



5. Even though the book is 400 pages, there is very little of it dealing with Custer's life. The author will mention substantiating evidence, but then never provide it. For example, she refers to archaeology work done at Little Bighorn but never says what it is. The book focuses way too much on Custer's wife...for a biography of him. There are 100 pages dealing with her widowhood. After reading the book, I don't know any more about Custer than I did before reading it. I had expected some sort of biography since the title reads "the life & death" & then meaning of the myth from that, but the book didn't deliver. I didn't get anything from the book to change my preconceptions of him from history class. The writer puts forth a victim defense...nothing was his fault, the army failed him, etc. Bottom line is 270+ men died at Little Bighorn.