Perhaps no Civil War General is surrounded by more controversy than Nathan Bedford Forrest and yet his life and campaigns are to a large extent ignored or lightly skipped over as they are lost in the large battles of that conflict. This book, written by a man of the South, is pro-Forrest and yet, it is difficult to refute most of the history as told when reviewed against other contemporary and non-contemporary accounts. 

About every ten years or so I go on a Civil War binge and this binge has started with this excellent book by two fine military historians.  Murray is professor emeritus of history at Ohio State University and his many books closely examine the changes in military thinking and tactics as well as the culture of both the military and their society in which they exist.  Hsieh is associate professor of history at the United State Naval Academy.  Together they have created a fine work that not only gives the details on the various campaigns, but the strengths and weaknesses of commanders down to the regimental level as well as how both the North and the South responded to the size, scope and technology of the Civil War battlefield.

General Longstreet served as Robert E. Lee’s solid right hand, commanding the First Corps. of the Confederate Army during most of the Civil war.  A strong believer in states rights (but not necessarily slavery) before the war, afterwards he was a strong Republican, believing that having been defeated during the war, the Southern states needed to work to be fully accepted back into the Union.  His post war political beliefs earned him the scorn of many Southerners, especially the old ruling class which hoped (and succeed) to place themselves back in power.

Having visited Istanbul several times, I was looking forward to this book which had received positive reviews from several national sources.  I must admit however, that my expectations were not met.  It might be that the author attempts to cover too much of history in this sever hundred plus page tome.  Starting at 800,000 BC-no, I am not kidding- Ms. Hughes provides us with information on the earliest settlements, how drastic weather created the area, etc.  While that is of interest to a certain group, the three main areas of concentration are the time from Severus and Constantine, the Byzantine and of course, the time of the Ottomans.

If you like history, you probably feel comfortable in a discussion about most Western European states including their history.  But how much do you really know about the real foundations upon which the modern states were built?  Norman Davies has put together a book which is exhaustive in detail about those communities, smaller states and some greater states which are bypassed in most history courses.  What role did the Kingdom of the Rock play in the formation of Scotland?  Did you know that Prussia was once a fiefdom of Poland (a fact which most German history tends to miss)?  How about the long history of Burgundia which covered over thirteen hundred years and yet is seldom taught? Of course, you do not want to miss the history of Litva which was a Grand Duchy with Kings.

I have always found it interesting that some of the very best histories are written not by professors, but rather by individuals who have not spent their entire lives studying a specific field or discipline.  Journalists can very often write fine histories, perhaps because they are used to looking at everyday people earlier in their careers.  Rick Atkinson, a former staff writer and editor at The Washington Post has won Pulitzer Prizes for history and journalism and his trilogy on the U.S. war effort in World War II is an example of research and writing at it’s finest.  In this book, the first of a trilogy on the American Revolution, Mr. Atkinson has again created a work that is unusually fine in the quality of the research, evenhandedness and writing.  In fact, he has created a history that reads more like an adventure novel, filled with tension, humanity, pain and relief. I believe that even a well-read historian of the period will find much that is new and well balanced in this book.

One of the joys of visiting New Orleans is the ability to wander in wonderful book stores; not the chain stores that are in malls, but in quirky little hide shops where you have to walk sideways through stacks and columns of books that can tower above you.  There you find treasures that have been passed down from reader to reader, sometimes with their names on the inside cover, sometimes with a birthday wish or a wish for recovery from some momentary disaster.  It was in one such book shop where I ran across a 1935 edition of this book which I had seen mentioned in both fiction and non-fiction historical volumes.  The illustrations are pen and ink and the editor takes care to place each section in proper context so that you feel you are getting the essence of the writer’s thoughts and feelings.

There is one great question that courses through this amazing book and that is, “Is there such a thing as Russian Culture?”.  In just under 700 pages, Figes, one of my favorite historians, traces Russia from its roots through the collapse of the Soviet Union, reviewing art, music, literature and culture in general.  To say the least, Russians (let’s exclude the peasant class for now) have been torn between their experience with Asia (Mongols, etc.) and their disillusionment with the West.  They have moved first one way then the other, all the time denying the worse of their history while attempting to create a new world for themselves.

Mary Beard first went to Rome over 40 years ago and immediately fell in love with its history and culture.  Over the decades, she has written nearly a dozen books on various aspects of Rome and in this nearly six hundred page volume covers from the founding of Rome (with its legends and myths), through the first 1000 years of its existence, ending with the rule of Caracalla, son of the “last good Emperor” Septimius Severus.  Caracalla did not, unfortunately follow in his father’s footsteps and has been described as “the enemy of all mankind”.  One must wonder about that title as he is noted for granting citizenship to all free inhabitants of the Roman Empire, some thirty million of them, but then as all citizens were required to pay taxes, one must wonder if his grant was all that valuable.

When Manchester was diagnosed with the illness that would eventually kill him, he took time off from his work on the third volume of Winston Churchill’s life (the volume was eventually completed by another author after Manchester died but it met with lukewarm reviews).  Manchester admits that he started this book based on a fellow authors request for Manchester to write the preface to a history on Magellan, but he found the subject so engrossing that he expanded the preface into this work.  He also admits that he started the book with poor knowledge of the subject which led him to write in an entirely different manner, almost as if he were a graduate student working on his thesis.  He was especially careful of sources and consulted noted historians who specialized in the time period for their input and feedback.