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Fredericksburg! Fredericksburg!
written by George C. Rable
Studio : The University of North Carolina Press
by The University of North Carolina Press
Release Date : 2001-12-02
Publisher : The University of North Carolina Press
Released : 2002-03-18
Availability : Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Number of Items : 1
EAN : 9780807826737
Avg. Customer Rating: (based on 20 reviews)
List Price : $45.00
Our Price : $22.00
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Product Description |
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Rable offers a detailed history of the Fredericksburg campaign and shows how the horrific carnage (with 13,000 casualties on the Union side and 5,000 Confederate casualties) haunted military and civilian survivors on both sides. |
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Fredericksburg! |
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Excellent recounting of the battle at Fredericksburg, VA in December of 1862, in which the Union forces took horrendous losses in an ill-conceived assault on virtually impregnable Confederate entrenchments. I found it especially interesting because I had a Great-Grandfather and a Great Uncle who were in the first wave attacking Marye's Heights, as members of the 28th NJ Volunteer Infantry, and managed to survive to tell the tale. This is a must read for any Civil War buff. |
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Great Overview |
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Fredericksburg! Fredericksburg! by George Rable is an excellent overview of an often overlooked campaign. Mr Rable's book, while not a military history, is a wonderfully writeen and easy to read book on the Fredericksburg Campaign. It starts off with Burnside replacing McClellan and ends with Burnside's dismissal after the infamous Mud March. If you want a great overall read on the entire campaign this book is for you. If you want a miltary history of the campaign then I would suggest Francis O'Reilly's Fredericksburg Campaign: Winter War on the Rappahannock. O'Reilly's book is almost a minute by minute, blow by blow of the battle, while Rable's is a remarkable overview of the entire campaign from beginning to bitter end. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the campaign and I would suggest O'Reilly's with this one by Mr Rable. |
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New Military history, not military at all. |
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I bought this book expecting a long overdue treatment on one of the most dramatic camapigns of the War between the States. Instead what I got was socio-political fluff that quite frankly has been beat over the heads of tens of thousands of college students for over fifty years. Hence the two star rating. It was, however, well written and the battle narrative (the miniscule one provided by Rable) is actually very good, just far too short for a book claiming to be written about the Fredericksburg campaign and battle. Had this not been stocked in the military history section, it would actually pass as great socio-political history. But since many of us have zero interest in that category... well anyway. "New" Military history is quite frankly an attempt to liberalize and propagandize the last bastion of history we have, military history. If all future War between the States and WWII and Napoleonic and Roman military history books turn out this way... just buy the old classics and re-read them. Don't waste your money on New Mil Hist and certainly don't waste your money on this book. It takes the dead horse of Emancipation Proclomation and beats it to past death into carcass mutilation. Again, this book was supposed to be about Fredericksburg Mr. Rable, not the cause of the war to begin with which by the way unfair taxation and import tarrif laws not slavery. Alas, a different subject for a different time. I repeat... DO NOT BUY THIS BOOK. Buy O'Reilleys instead. |
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The New Military History |
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It is worth paying attention to Rable's stated goals, as opposed to those desired by the blood and guts school of gunmetal and bayonetophiles. What is important about this book--which, of all the 50 or more studies of Civil War battles I've read, is among the finest--is that it's ambitions extend beyond the entertainments of military pornography. Any writing that attempts to incite in the reader, the same feelings sensations experienced by the figures being written about, is along one definiation pornographic. This is what a majority of battle studies do--along with their fictional godfather, Tom Clancy. While this can often be engaging material, the fact is that its use is spent once the book is closed. No deeper cultural, political, or for that matter military understandings emerge, and this is what Rable is trying to accomplish here. His extended preliminary chapters on the policital and social context of this battle are not simple addenda--social "fluff" to earn New Historicism points--to the main action that occured on the plains before Marye's Heights. As Rable so nicely suggests, they are integral to understand why this battle not only played out in the way it did, but why it was consequential. One can only hope that more historians will take Rable's lead in assembling studies of other crucial battles--such as Antietam, Gettysburg, the Seven Days--along these same lines. |
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Who Needs More Social Context? |
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While a hefty and well-researched tome, F-F spends far too many words on what any half-literate student of American History in general, and the Civil War in specific, already knows. Volumes of individual soldier letters and diaries abound. The subject has been beaten to death--along with the home front. Likewise, the Emancipation Proclamation is its own cottage industry. So just tell me about the battle. Maybe 30 or 40 pages to set it up, then get on with the menauvers--the more detailed the better. Bottom line: Buy O'Reilley's |
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