McPherson's Pulitzer Prize-winning opus is by now the standard one-volume
treatment of the Civil War. Encyclopedic in scope, it synthesizes political
and military history into a sweeping narrative of America's national epic,
one that paints the North's victory as the triumph of a "revolutionary
future" of "competitive, egalitarian, free-labor capitalism" over
the tradition-bound and hierarchical society of the South. This new edition
eliminates the footnotes and trims a fifth of the text to make way for color
maps of major battles and campaigns and hundreds of photographs, cartoons
and artist's depictions from the period. McPherson's accompanying captions
sometimes overdo the characterological readings (in one portrait of
a Confederate general we can supposedly "almost see Breckinridge's handlebar
mustache twitching in anger"), but they provide interesting biographical
background as well as piquant details and an indelible period feel. Serious
Civil War buffs will delight in this magisterial treatment.

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