5 comments about 35 Days to Gettysburg: The Campaign Diaries of Two American Enemies.

1. This was the second book I read on the subject of the civil war. The personal perspective added to my endless interest.
   
   There is little to add to what has been said other than this is a DO NOT MISS READ! Absolutely READ THIS BOOK!
   
   I could not put this book down when I read it...



2. 35 Days To Gettysburg: The Campaign Diaries Of Two American Enemies by Civil War enthusiast Mark Nesbitt features the daily journal entries of two ordinary soldiers caught up in the American Civil War: Thomas Lewis Ware, a Confederate from rural Georgia; and Franklin Horner, a Union soldier from Pennsylvania coal land. Their various perspectives and recorded experiences (sometimes conflicting, sometimes all too parallel), lead up to one of the bloodiest battles in the entire four year conflict, are vividly recounted with meticulous notes and a comprehensive index in this truly fascinating compilation. 35 Days To Gettysburg is a superbly presented primary source offering an up-close and personal a view of America's deadliest war, and a truly welcome and much appreciated contribution to the growing library of American Civil War studies.



3. Being a fan of Mark Nesbitt's Ghost of Gettysburg book series I was sold on the idea of reading his new book that told of two soldiers of opposing armies brought together at Gettysburg. Nesbitt's approach to telling the diaries of two soldiers written on similar dates was a great idea though I found that the Union story of Private Horner lacked the details compared to his opposition Confederate Private Ware. Ware's details seem to blur Horner's quick and rather limited writing. Both soldiers certainly write about the marching and battle while Nesbitt tries to balance army movements with historical backing and concepts. I found the maps helpful but often hard to follow because they were photos of very detailed maps that made things hard to read in black and white. Had they been less of detail or re-drawn for the book as other history books it would have been much easier to comprehend. As much as I am a fan of Nesbitt's work I found myself reading this book and wanting more detail as the book is a very quick read. I would have liked to give this book 3.5 Stars though Amazon's rating system doesn't allow for halves.



4. I really liked this book. This book is great for people who like history. This book is about two men and their diaries. The book is also about the battle of Gettysburg.



5. Mark Nesbit had a very interesting idea for a Civil War book. He found two soldiers, Franklin Horner (USA) and Thomas Ware (CSA), who faced each other across a few dangerous yards at Gettysburg. He retraced their routes of march to the battle through their diary entries (over 35 days - hence the title).

   Both enlisted men got to the battlefield the old fashioned way: walking. Unfortunately, their writing is not similarly matched. Whereas the Ware diary entries are often vivid and descriptive, the author's Union traveler records at best three or four lines of not very illuminating fragments on the same days. The result is leads to a somewhat unbalanced first person description of the route to Gettysburg. I can imagine finding two surviving diaries from adversaries who faced each other in opposing regiments was difficult, and the author is to be recognized for a very good idea. One wishes his task could have been better fulfilled with two prodigious diarists.

   Each of the 35 chapters starts off with the opposing diary entries. The author then explains the section of march (if they were marching that day) each soldier traveled. The author also spends significant time describing camp life, service in general and the trials of marching experienced by civil war soldiers in general. I was somewhat surprised that the author spent the bulk of the book on general descriptions and backgrounds instead of the march to Gettysburg (as one could have supposed from the title). However, it must be acknowledged that this background is a good introduction to soldierly travails in that war.

   The section on their units meeting at the foot of Little Round Top is the best part of the book. Nesbitt fleshes out these chapters with unit commanders' action reports -- the result is a more vivid and full description of the last of the 35 days.

   All in all an interesting book, but I wished it could have been more fully focused on the actual march and had a better Union diarist as a story teller.

No comments about The Clays of Alabama: A Planter-Lawyer-Politician Family (Library Alabama Classics).

No comments about The Mosby Myth: A Confederate Hero in Life and Legend (American Crisis Series, No. 4).

No comments about Truman in Retirement: A Former President Views the Nation and the World.

No comments about The Rocking Chair Reader Family Gatherings: True Stories of Celebration And Reunion (Rocking Chair Reader).

5 comments about American Traveler: The Life and Adventures of John Ledyard, the Man Who Dreamed of Walking the World.

1. When you think of the great American explorers, you pretty much start with Lews & Clark, throw in your Daniel Boone types and assorted mountain men, and then maybe close out with assorted ill-fated Arctic explorers. Few today know of one of the earliest and most widely traveled of this breed, John Ledyard, the American traveler of this book's title.
   
   In his brief life, he dropped out of one of the first classes of the then-new Dartmouth College, sailed around the Caribbean and Atlantic, deserted merchant ships, joined the British army and then the navy, was a member of Cook's fatal third Pacific voyage, became the first American to see Hawaii, Alaska, and the West Coast, traveled across the bulk of Siberia in a quixotic attempt to walk around the world, and met and corresponded with such notables as Thomas Jefferson, James Cook, the Marquis de Lafayette, Joseph Banks the scientist, Benjamin Franklin, Robert Morris the financier, and many more.
   
   He was an educated man who served as a marine corporal, a collector of vocabularies and handicrafts and tattoos, an amateur ethnologist with a tremendously sympathetic view of indigenous peoples, a theorizer who correctly deduced the connection between the Siberian peoples and the Native Americans, a sponger off wealthy acquaintances and a fancier of fine clothing, and a would-be fur mogul.
   
   Besides his overwhelming wanderlust that drove him relentlessly forward, so that in the last seven years of his life, the longest he stayed in one place was six months, he was possessed of an erratic temper that could flare forth with regrettable consequences. Despite his scholarly gifts, he was not averse to bouts of pugilism or worse: "He got into fistfights in London, started a shoving match in Tonga and challenged a Siberian provincial governor to a duel."
   
   Today he would be (probably correctly) diagnosed as a manic-depressive, but he channeled his energies well. He may also have had a touch of a death wish, as his last journey was singularly ill-advised under the conditions and he seemed to have a premonition of his own doom.
   
   Zug tells Ledyard's story in a mostly unadorned fashion suitable for the layperson, not too heavily weighted down with jargon or digressions. He draws heavily upon primary sources, mostly letters to and from Ledyard, keeping their original idiosyncratic grammar, rhetorical flourishes, and spelling intact. His prose is sometimes a bit clumsy, but he also is capable of an amusing turn of phrase, as when he notes that "Thrashing and punching were not his only reactions to Londoners".
   
   The book includes a couple of maps at the front, a selection of illustrations in the middle, and a section of notes at the end to which the reader should refer periodically.
   
   Ledyard's is an interesting tale told competently, although I feel Zug slightly overstates his significance. But this is a good account nevertheless and certainly a valuable addition to the field of exploration literature.



2. American Traveler: The Life and Adventures of John Ledyard, the Man Who Dreamed of Walking the World is a great find.
   
   John Ledyard lived in interesting times: second half of the 18th century. His 37 years of life was capped by a manic two decade long roller coaster ride across the world. He came of age in pre-Revolutionary War America, then under sketchy circumstances began service in the British military. He served on Cook's third around the World voyage as part of a Marine Guard - their job to prevent mutinies - a unique position to observe the historic exploration, particularly the first contact in the Hawaiian Islands.
   
   After the experience of the third Cook voyage Ledyard seemed to develop a vision of the world. His vision: the world is a benign place for the lone traveler. He believed that he could cross the North American continent so long as he went alone and carried nothing of value other than letters attesting to his good character. Was that possible? It would almost have to be easier then most of what he ended up doing by heading east, from France.
   
   I'm left thinking what if? What if John Ledyard had listened to Jefferson and started in Kentucky. Could he have crossed to the Pacific on foot in the late 1780s? What if? There are many `what ifs' suggested by John Ledyard's story. What ifs about the man and what ifs about the times he lived.



3. I'd never heard of John Ledyard before ordering this book; I greatly enjoy travel and this story is incredible. Every once in awhile, I had to stop turning the pages to reflect upon what I'd just read. The adventure and tales were awesome. More than once, I had to remind myself that this is non-fiction. Ledyard really believed he could walk around the world? I'm not one to lightly label a books as must read, but this one should be on such a list.
   
   Here's to you, John Ledyard.



4. John Ledyard has been mostly forgotten today, but this late eighteenth century New England Yankee dreamed of exporing an as-yet largely unknown world and, before his death while still in his thirties, he had accomplished part of that dream. Ledyard, a correspondent of Thomas Jefferson, was very much cast in the mold of an explorer and natural philosopher at the end of the Age of Reason. Russian bureaucracy and xenophobia cut short Ledyard's planned journey around the globe on foot (with water transportation when necessary) and he died on the eve of setting out on an expedition to explore central Africa, so his largest ambitions remained unfulfilled, but nonetheless he had been a companion and chronicler of Captain on his last, fatal voyage to the Pacific.



5. I've been fascinated by Ledyard since I first encountered him, in 1989, at a University of Washington history lecture. At the time I was struck by the fact that I'd never heard of him before. How could this guy have been forgotten? Poking around the stacks in the library led me to Sparks' and Watrous' work, but I couldn't believe that somebody wasn't out there researching and writing about Ledyard. I've been poking around ever since. At last, Zug has delivered the biography I've been waiting for.
   
   American Traveler serves as an outstanding introduction to one of the most fascinating figures in American history. Zug does a wonderful job describing Ledyard's relationships with movers and shakers of the late 18th century (particularly Jefferson), as well as his role as a catalyst behind the eventual expansion of American power. However, the real strength of the book is Zug's portrait of Ledyard the world traveler--a guy on the road who, though frustrated by the restrictions of time and petty bureaucracy, takes a genuine interest in the people he encounters. Yes--Ledyard was a spectacular failure as a businessman, but he understood something that many (apparently including P.J. O'Rourke) do not: traveling isn't about arriving at your destination--it's all about the road trip and the people you meet along the way. In this sense, there has never been a more spectacular success than John Ledyard.

5 comments about Ida:Her Labor of Love.

1. As a member of the Herwick clan, I was captivated by the story of family members that I never got to meet as well as those that I have known and loved. While this is a work of fiction, the story itself is based on factual people and events. I was moved by Ida's experiences and in the manner she carried herself. I have lost count of the number of copies I have purchased for gifts and to replace the loaned books that I have not gotten back, and still continue to recommend Ida: Her Labor of Love to Colorado history buffs.



2. Ida, her labor of Love, by carol crawford mcmanus
   
   
   A book of local interest to historians, women's groups, those who want to learn about the old mountain west, "Ida", written by Carol Crawford McManus, is the true tale of
   a Colorado woman whose bittersweet life spanned from 1873 to 1919. The author,
   one of Ida's granddaughters, chronicles the events beginning with Ida's childhood, and ending with her death. Bittersweet is the perfect word to describe this life, full of the sweetness of love from her husband and numerous children, but so too full of the bitter physical hardships felt by the inhabitants of this harsh country, especially it's women, who like Ida, bore many and lost several children.
   
   Before the fortunes made here by ski resorts owners and real estate investors, the high dessert plateau and soaring mountains of Eagle County, Colorado made few wealthy. Agriculture and timbering were the primary enterprises. A few struck it rich in the silver mines of Leadville, but most miners just worked and lived like beasts. For the most part, early settlers got by on homesteading, raising a few summer crops for home consumption, and hunting. Later, when game was gone, and more people moved in, cattle was brought to the area and sheep too, although those two grazing animals proved incompatible on the same range. The short summer growing season here in the mountains and the dry conditions reduced crop yields. Irrigation for that which could grow was and is a necessity. Whatever was grown or purchased had to be stored for consumption throughout the winter. Plagued by cold temperatures and the snows that arrive in September, and leave in May, residents of this area, before the advent of modern heating, must have felt the cold the minute they left the open fire. Transportation for us, using our highways and SUV's with snow tires, is no problem. For the people of former generations, venturing forth in the deep freeze of winter could have been deadly. Early homesteaders, according to "Ida", used home made sleds pulled by men in snowshoes to bring home supplies from the trading post. Travel by horse and carriage in the deep of winter was almost impossible. Horses would have been buried up to their withers and beyond in drifts of fluffy white snow, termed precious "powder" by the modern skier who comes here from all over the globe for the experience of skiing on "the champagne of snow". For modern inhabitants, a white Colorado winters' blessings' of several hundred inches of snow at resorts situated some 10,000 feet above sea level is no real threat to quality of life, but to a pioneer, these harsh realities could threaten life itself.
   
   Into this wild, unsettled, mountainous area, Ida came as a young wife and mother. Ida had been born in Nebraska, and left motherless there at age twelve. This was not an unusual occurrence as the average life span of the frontier woman was 29. After the death of her mother, Ida was left to clean and cook and care for her younger siblings. A few years later, Josiah, Si, Hendrick came along and courted Ida. He was an adventuresome young man several years her senior who worked in construction. Ida made the difficult decision to leave her Father and siblings and follow her young man. When Ida was fifteen, they married, and that first year, Si moved his bride to Kansas in hopes of finding better paying work on the railroads that were being laid across Kansas. At the end of that hard overland trip to Kansas by horse and wagon, Ida's first child was stillborn. Once in Kansas, Ida made a home for the two of them in a small cabin. She planted a large vegetable garden, and harvested and stored the crops. She baked breads and biscuits, cooked the meat her husband killed, and again began her family. She bore two children in that cabin, and then was left for two years while Si ventured to Colorado in search of a better job. Fortunately, her Mother-in-law, Susannah, lived just a few miles away, and could provide help and companionship. Eventually,
   Si sent $100 for his wife and children to take the newly finished rail road to Colorado. Instead of spending that huge sum on a ticket, Si's brothers, their Mother Susannah, and Ida and her children, gathered their forces and traveled to the mountains by wagon. Their trip, like that of so many others, was rather uneventful until they encountered the Rocky Mountains. However, once there, they were met by Si who by now had mastered the territory. Together, they traveled the Tennessee Pass, and once over that treacherous continental divide still closed today to winter traffic, they continued to the Eagle River Valley. Except for the mining city of Leadville, filled with miners and saloon girls, and the trading post at Red Cliff, this vast country was wide open and almost uninhabited. The little party built two cabins along side the Eagle River. Susannah and her two single sons lived in one, and Ida and Si and their growing family lived in another. Happiness settled over this brave little troop for a few years. Then, Susannah died, leaving Ida without her female friendship and midwifery support, and once again, Ida found herself pregnant with another child. They seemed to arrive every two years, starting with her first, a still born, at age sixteen. Into a loving but unstable home they were born, for their father, Si was always in search of a better job, a better life. Si and his brothers had the idea to cut timber and sell it to the railroad which was expanding into Colorado. Again, according to the pattern that had become established, Si moved the family. This time, appalling, Ida was left alone with her young children in a dug out earthen hole near a raw tent city. Again, Ida was pregnant. By the end of her winter in a dirt hole, living like an animal in its' burrow, Ida and the children were suffering from malnutrition as they had not been left with enough money or food. That pregnancy did not go well, and ended, without medical care, when a sickly newborn son died. Ida did recover, and her husband reclaimed her and their family, and moved them again to another spot on this high plateau pierced with scores of soaring peaks over 14,000 feet in elevation. Eventually, after working at construction and providing timbers to the railroad, Si took up homesteading again, and, this time, stuck with it. They family settled into a stable situation with some modicum of physical comfort and financial stability. There, the large brood grew into maturity. Along the way, Ida made sure that at some point, they had some schooling. The children, who were born later rather than sooner into this family of numerous offspring, got more formal education due to improving, stable circumstances. There were several infant deaths, but all of the children born healthy, survived into adulthood, save one young boy who was bitten by a poisonous snake. When Ida died, of cancer near age fifty, her children had grown and were somewhat scattered across western Colorado,like seeds on a fertile field. Many had married, and all seemed to be making their way
   in the world. The overall success of this family is in itself a remarkable feat for people who lived with such limited resources and in such a wild time and place. It speaks to the resiliency of the American frontier spirit, and is an inspiration to us all. This tale is also a stark reminder to modern women of how difficult their role as bearer of the next generation was and can be; a possible death defying ordeal for both mother and child.
   
   The biographer granddaughter writes this family story in a simple straightforward way. Ida is a revered family legend, and described as being almost perfect; her one possible mistake was in marrying a man with wanderlust. Described in less saint- like terms, Si is shown in a selfish way to abandon his head of the household responsibilities from time to time in search of adventure. He also is described as being "lusty", even as the years and decades of marriage mount. This reader reviewer had the distinct impression that this was the first book ever written by this author. Nevertheless, it seems to be an interesting, accurate portrayal of a life in a bygone place and time. A wild place, this was, now conquered by modernity. Only a catastrophic snow storm, a winter `Katrina', it seems, could once again reduce mountain inhabitants to live on the edge in terms of creature comforts, and survival, as Ida and Si had to do on a regular basis.



3. All women everywhere should read this book about a truly amazing & courageous woman. Ida is a lady that all women can admire & appreciate. I didn't want this book to end. You won't be disappointed in this beautiful book.



4. An interesting and well written story of one woman's life. You will not be disappointed in this book. Ida's life is written in novel form with her many triumphs and disappointments drawing the reader in. I couldn't wait to get back to Ida and her life while I was reading this book.



5. I am not the typical book reader you usually see in this site. I seldom read, because I get easily distracted and bored. Yet this book was great. Now I want to read more books on Western Colorado hoping to find other stories as interesting as this was.

1 comments about Coyotes I Have Known.

1. ...because that's what you'll get. I've met John Duncklee and he's a charismatic cowboy who's lived more in his life than three men could fit in their's. His charm and sincerity translates on the page to weave a gripping narative of his experiences and revelations as he struggles to make a fortune doing what he loves, roping and wrangling. While the book is educational and engaging on the subject of ranching, herding, and spotting a cheat, it tends to lose the audience if they're not already absolutely fascinated with those subjects.
   No one could write about being a modern cowboy better than John Dunklee, but the reader must be in love with cowboys.

1 comments about The Human Tradition in the American Revolution (Human Tradition in America).

1. Nancy Rhoden and Ian Steele edit The Human Tradition In The American Revolution gathering concise essays to explore many facts of the American Revolution. From Afro-American and Native American participants to a minister and frontiersmen, this focuses on individuals who made a difference.

No comments about Surviving on the Texas Frontier: The Journal of a Frontier Orphan Girl in San Saba County, 1852-1907.