Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era

Description

This text presents a history of the American Civil War. It starts with an account of the years before the civil war and its causes - placing slavery firmly back in the centre stage - before discussing the war, the two sides, the international dimension, the position and role of the free blacks and slaves, to its outcome, the end of the war and reconstruction.

James McPherson is Professor Emeritus of American History at Princeton University. Battle Cry of Freedom won the Pulitzer Prize for non-fiction in 2003.

The definitive study, meticulous in its scholarship and compulsive in its readability * Financial Times * McPherson is wonderfully lucid... Above all, everything is in a living relationship with everything else ... Omitting nothing important, whether military, political or economic, he yet manages to make everything he touches drive the narrative forward ... historical writing of the highest order * The New York Times * A distinguished contribution to American history ... He has succeeded brilliantly. He has written what will surely become the standard one-volume history of the great conflict which forged America as a united nation * Independent * Absolutely brilliant ... McPherson has fresh approaches to the war's background, the four years of struggle and the aftermath * Washington Post Book World * McPherson wears with equal ease the hats of biographer, economist, sociologist and military historian .. Probably the best single-volume history of America's Civil War yet written * Economist *