Decision in the West

English

ISBN: 070060748X

EAN: 9780700607488

Category: History / Military / General

Publisher: University Press of Kansas

Release Date: 10/31/1995

Synopsis: Following a skirmish on June 28, 1864, a truce is called so the North can remove their dead and wounded. For two hours, Yankees and Rebels mingle, with some of the latter even assisting the former in their grisly work. Newspapers are exchanged. Northern coffee is swapped for Southern tobacco. Yanks crowd around two Rebel generals, soliciting and obtaining autographs. As they part, a Confederate calls to a Yankee, I hope to miss you, Yank, if I happen to shoot in your direction. May I, never hit you Johnny if we fight again, comes the reply. The reprieve is short. A couple of months, dozens of battles, and more than 30,000 casualties later, the North takes Atlanta. One of the most dramatic and decisive episodes of the Civil War, the Atlanta Campaign was a military operation carried out on a grand scale across a spectacular landscape that pitted some of the wars best (and worst) general against each other. In Decision in the West, Albert Castel provides the first detailed history of the Campaign published since Jacob D. Coxs version appeared in 1882. Unlike Cox, who was a general in Shermans army, Castel provides an objective perspective and a comprehensive account based on primary and secondary sources that have become available in the past 110 years. Castel gives a full and balanced treatment to the operations of both the Union and Confederate armies from the perspective of the common soldiers as well as the top generals. He offers new accounts and analyses of many of the major events of the campaign, and, in the process, corrects many long-standing myths, misconceptions, and mistakes. In particular, he challenges the standard view of Shermans performance. Written in present tense to give a sense of immediacy and greater realism, Decision in the West demonstrates more definitively than any previous book how the capture of Atlanta by Shermans army occurred and why it assured Northern victory in the Civil War. This book will immediately become the standard study of the campaign. Quite simply, there has never been anything else out there to compare with it. No book can exhaust such a massive subject, of course, but this comes as close as anyone could hope for in a single volume. Almost everything in the book is new or in some way ground breaking. The research is impeccable, surely the most exhaustive ever turned to this subject. The writing is pure Castel at his very best. A magnificent effort.-William C. Davis, author of Jefferson Davis: The Man and His Hour and former editor of Civil War Times Illustrated.

Decision in the West

Illustrated: Yes

Format: Hardcover

Height: 1.4 inches

Width: 6.13 inches

Length: 9.25 inches

Weight: 33.33 oz

Pages: xviii, 670