Safire has written a Civil War novel that is as inaccurate as any I've ever read. He confuses generals with similar names, for example. He has Baldy Smith at Shiloh with Grant, when it was actually C.F. Smith who was there. He takes Nathaniel Lyon out of Missouri, and puts him in Maryland in place of Nathaniel Banks.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. His worst blunder was when he was describing the capture of two Confederate soldiers and said they knew they would be sent north to Libby Prison, as bad in the north as Andersonville was in the south. They couldn't possibly have thought that, since Andersonville didn't even exist yet at that point in the war. Besides, Libby was a Confederate prison camp in Richmond, Virginia.

The book is obviously not well-researched, in spite of his long, impressive-looking section of notes at the end of the book. There are some great Civil War novels out there, but this is certainly not one of them.

If you want to read a good one, try one of these:

1. The Killer Angels
2. Walk Like a Man
3. Ride With the Devil
4. A Soldier's Book
5. Nashville, 1864
6. The Red Badge of Courage

I give this book 5 stars for its subject matter and detail, but two stars for the quality of writing, averaging to 4 stars overall.

This book will literally overwhelm you with detail, and to that extent it is a staggering achievement. There is a huge amount of detail here about political, military, and social figures of the Civil War era--more than most readers frankly would ever want to know. Is it accurate? Beats me. Is it interesting? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. For example, Safire creates an unforgettable characterization of Albert Sidney Johnston, the great Confederate general of the Western theater. On the other hand, there is far more detail here about Rose Greenhow, Kate Chase, and others too numerous to mention than I can imagine anyone wanting to know. And I speak as a Civil War buff of sorts.

This is in fact the story of the Civil War from the election of Abraham Lincoln to the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation. A pivotal time in America's history, and Safire is right to assume that this subject merits close attention. This is a book you can truly immerse yourself in.

Unfortunately, the novel is pretty heavy going as a consequence of the vast amount of detail, and the rapidly and constantly changing characters and points of view. Safire's prose is heavy almost as though he himself is staggering under the weight of the details he presents. Well, that's how it seemed to me anyway.

This is not a book for the casual reader. But there is a lot here, and if you put in the effort (and it can be a pleasent effort) you will be both entertained and educated.

Safire has written what can only be described as "history nouveau'.At times soap opera, comedy, and tragedy that was the American Civil War, Safire has his pulse on what was. From the opening pages, to the conclusion the richness of the writing is outstanding. I recommend this book not only for the " weekend historian", but for the High School- College student as a historical primer. Don't be overwhelmed by the size of this Novel, once started it is impossible to put down, as the characters become alive in front of you. These "historical figures" were ordinary people caught up on extraordinary times, the humor is in the fact that when Safire if most serious he is fictitional, when most humorous he is historically accurate. The fun is trying to figure out which is which...

I consider Abraham Lincoln our greatest President - greater even than Washington, Jefferson, Teddy Roosevelt or FDR - for no other reason than he performed the duties of his office under pressures that would have beaten down a lesser man. Consider for a moment. He had to quell a nation-shattering rebellion. The top generals of his eastern armies were incompetent. He lost two of his young sons to disease. He had to persuade those states still loyal to accept two very controversial initiatives: a military draft and emancipation of blacks. His wife was a spendthrift and mentally unbalanced.

LINCOLN'S MEN examines Uncle Abe's relationship with the men of his armies, particularly those citizens that enlisted (or were drafted) into the states' volunteer regiments. Realizing that the officer corps took care of its own, his concern was chiefly spent on such issues important to the non-commissioned ranks, such as pay, fair military justice, length of enlistment, battlefield health care, and supply. Lincoln's office door was always open to anyone, even the most humble of privates, who had a petition or grievance to present. I find this last fact truly amazing when, today, the White House is a virtual fortress denying casual access to the most innocent of visitors.

The cynical might say that Lincoln was simply a politician, in the basest sense, currying favor with those whose efforts in the trenches might potentially fail to keep him in power. Indeed, while he was constantly visiting with and reviewing the troops of the eastern armies, particularly the hapless Army of the Potomac, he never once called on the western commands of Grant and Sherman because, after all, they were consistent winners. While this favoritism is glaring, the author, William Davis, presents it simply as a father caring for the most needy of his children. I agree. The affection Lincoln engendered in "his boys" in all military theaters of operation is evidenced by the vote they gave him in the election of 1864, and the tributes accorded him by veterans' groups in the decades following the war. He was truly Father Abraham.

LINCOLN'S MEN is a well-researched, informative example of historical reporting. Two-hundred fifty pages of text are supported by a 14-page bibliography and 46 pages of notes. I have only two complaints, which prevent me from awarding five stars. First, the author includes virtually no examples of Lincoln's famous, rustic wit. (The author's style, at times, makes for very dry reading. Dry as a soldier's hardtack.) Second, there's no supporting section of photographs. However, I certainly recommend this volume to any student of the Civil War.

Given the mountain of books about either Abraham Lincoln or the American Civil War, one would think that someone would have come up with the idea of exploring the relationship between Lincoln and the rank-and-file Union soldier. But Davis is apparently the first to do so, and he handles the topic in a way that is bound to delight anyone interested in either topic, from the novice to the expert.

He has obviously thoroughly researched the wealth of letters, diaries, and other orginal sources that are available; his points are well documented. Moreover, he avoids repeating himself by either using the same source over and over again (as Ken Burns did in the Civil War series and Bruce Catton tended to do in his otherwise fascinating histories), nor does he pile up so much evidence on a single point that the reader becomes bored.

He explores the Lincoln-enlisted man relationship from a variety of angles, ranging from Lincoln's dismissal of the highly popular McClellan to his liberal use of his pardoning prerogative for wayward soldiers to veterans' attitudes in the 1864 Presidential election to his assassination. He frames much of the book in terms of Parson Weems's classic biography of George Washington, which depicted GW as "the Father of His Country," and suggests that the book had an early, perhaps subconscious effect on Lincoln, giving him a model to adopt when he became President--and makes a plausible case.

He also demonstrates that Lincoln very consciously invested in promoting a positive image of himself with the Union rank and file. Lincoln was very aware of how his position as President affected everyday Americans, and became (according to Davis) the first President to make an effort to be seen by ordinary citizens, especially Union soldiers.

This is a well-written, enjoyable book, satisfying in every sense. It was truly hard to put down.

This book is an excellent example of how one man was willing to take on the weight of the world to preserve a nation and take care of it's people. The world could use more "Abe Lincolns". An intimate look at Lincoln's intelligence, compassion, bravery, humor, and tremendous effection for his army, truely a role model for any generation. A smooth read that will give you a new found respect for the 16th President and the Civil War.

To prospective buyers it may be helpful to know that this is a British book: the selection of names is heavily influenced by this. For example "lacewood" is given here in the literal sense, as quartersawn wood of a species with high rays, with a "lacy" ray fleck, originally Platanus spp. Later (although the book omits to mention this) the woods of the Proteaceae (both the Australian silky oaks and the South American roupala) were also so used. The American use of "lacewood" for the Australian silky oaks, however sawn, is somewhat of a misnomer.

If you ever wondered what a certain wood looked kie, here is the answer book. A nessacary item for every cabinetmaker.

I found this work particularly useful in designing a woodworking project as a novice who wanted to make something beautiful and lasting. Selecting hardwoods for my project was a major undertaking because of high expectations I have of the woods from which I built my dining table. I wanted beauty, durability, and contrast; at the same time needing compatibility among the five different woods I used. While the book has its critics, as a lay woodworker, it served my purposes admirably. The concise information featured for every wood was extremely useful. If the book sees a new edition, I hope a competent editor will preclude the many minor grammar errors, typos, and several inconsistencies I noted. The text fails to be consistent in always providing data critical to my own project: not all entries provide information about the stability of the wood in service.

Being a disciple of W. Edwards Demming, Peter Scholtes has a quality department's process bias; emphasizing systems, processes and statistics. Was I reading another new age quality assurance textbook? Because of this, I felt he overemphasized the present moment. True leaders are going places and have many loyal followers. The book rarely talks about this visionary thinking or how effective organizations are moving into new areas. This is a good book for beginners as long as you're aware he presents a different viewpoint, and because of this, he did bring some useful ideas that other books didn't have. Ironically, he openly admits that you may not agree with some of his viewpoints.

Scholtes expects to shock people right from the first page of his Preface. Let me quote extensively:
"More than 95 percent of your organization's problems derive from your systems, processes, and methods, not from your individual workers....

We look to the heroic efforts of outstanding individuals for our successful work. Instead we must create systems that routinely allow excellent work to result from the ordinary efforts of ordinary people.

Changing the system will change what people do. Changing what people do will not change the system.

Certain common management approaches--management by objectives, performance appraisal, merit pay, pay for performance, and ISO 9000--represent not leadership but the abdication of leadership.

Current buzzwords like empowerment, accountability, and high performance are meaningless, empty babble..." (ix-x)

The old organizations's leaders need: forcefulness, ability to motivate and inspire, decisiveness, willfulness, assertiveness, result- and bottom-line orientation, being task-oriented and having integrity and diplomacy.

Scholtes' new leadership competencies (much influenced by Edward Deming's ideas...) are based on a new mentality and understanding of: systems thinking, variability of work, how we learn, psychology and human behavior, interactions of these components, and vision, meaning, direction and focus.

The bulk of the book gives clear elaborations of these new competencies, with charts, illustrations, pertinent questions and many tools. Ch. 4 on "Getting the Daily Work Done" is a tough one, partly because it takes much effort to grasp the author's use of a Japanese term, "Gemba" (even when I can read the original Chinese characters). Issues of waste, standardization, change versus improvement, performance without appraisal, use of measurement data... are all seen in the new light of systems thinking.

Carefully study the differences between "Crazymakers" and "Healing and Learning" in the workplace (pp378-387). There is a summary of the book under "The 47 Habits of Pretty Good Leaders" (pp391-6). Peter Senge's books give excellent background material. This one is a real handbook that should be methodically studied, discussed, adapted and applied to one's own institutions. One must not forget the advice given in Chapter 1: "leaders must be patient with themselves and others, persistent, and humble, and allow themselves and others to be inelegant." (p12,p391)

Having attended one of his talks, I gathered this book to be condensed from Scholtes' personal experience and practical knowledge which can also be seen in his "Teams" predecessor. A functional manual covering leadership in all aspects, with its depths and substance manifested in simple and easy to follow guidelines.

An ideal recommendation for any modern manager.

Without using unappropiate language, this book [was really bad].... Like what I read, this book was not packed with action. I do not recommend this book to the people out there who want nonstop blood and conflict after conflict. I would recommend this book to those people who always want happy endings. Really, to me this book was really boring. I had to read this for school, and the title looked good, and when I read the back, it sounded good. Well, shows that the saying, don't judge a book by it's cover got me this time. The vocab of this book is kind of weird. You would have to be at least a teen to read this. Other than that, don't even try.

Without using inappropriate language, this book [was not good]. Like what I read, this book was not packed with action. I do not recommend this book to the people out there who want nonstop blood and conflict after conflict. I would recommend this book to those people who always want happy endings. Really, to me this book was really boring. I had to read this for school, and the title looked good, and when I read the back, it sounded good. Well, shows that the saying, don't judge a book by it's cover got me this time. The vocab of this book is kind of weird. You would have to be at least a teen to read this. Other than that, don't even try.

The Bloody County is a magnificent book. Sometimes it gets boring by telling to much informantion at one time, but then becomes good by picking up the story really quick.The story is based on a young boy named Ben Buck and his family that move from Connecticut to a placed called the Wyoming River Valley. The government one day comes and tell them that they have to move because another family rightfully owns this land, but the family won't leave. The next week Indians that work for the government come and scalp Ben's mother and his sister's husband. This scares the whole family and they split up. This book has its ups and downs but in the end comes out to be a pretty good book. The best part of the book is when the river floods, pulling a family and their canoe into the raging stream and then the Buck family saves them. I recommend this book to a person this book to a person that likes to read about early settlement in the U.S.

Dave Landry provides a rare commodity with his first work "Dave Landry on Swing Trading"; a book that's not only concise and to the point, but also highly practical and full of useful detail that every trader from a rank novice to a seasoned pro can benefit from.

I found Landry's approach refreshing and felt as if I was sitting over his shoulder learning how to put together the whole enchilada. Includes over a dozen time-proven set-ups, some of which appear in book form for the first time that I'm aware of, as well as critical money management schemes and clear tips for scaling out of positions to maximize profits while controlling risk.

The large charts and numbered summary accompanying each technique continue to prove invaluable for me as a accessible quick reference quide. Many trading books are a bit obtuse, forcing one to re-read entire chapters when all you need is a refresher during the trading day. Not so here.

If you carefully follow even one of the clever set-ups in this book combined with his money mangement suggestions, I suspect the... price of the book will be repaid in exponential fashion.

This book can be considered "The Ultimate Swing Traders Manual". Landry provides clear and concise rules that will bring trading success to anyone who reads and implements these strategies in the book.

The Oscillator Swing System is one of the best there is. I have adapted it to trading both stock and futures. The results are amazing. This one system is worth the price of the book!

Well worth the $... for the book as the reward from his insight will payout 1000 fold. Buy it! Great ideas from a great trader.

Dave Landry on Swing Trading has it ALL. Landry goes into psychology, money management, systems and setups. This book a must for ALL traders who are seeking new trading ideas and strategies that REALLY work!

Stategies like the TKO and the Bowties are among my favorites. One Bowtie trade took care of the cost of the book 100 fold!

Landry is what you call SIFU in the Asian culture, he is the Master (of swing trading) and we the readers are his students. Practice and study what the Master has taught you and you will succeed in your trading.

A must read by all...novice and professionals!

All I can say is get this book written by a true Master of the Art of Swing Trading.

this book just doesnt cut it as professional history. It is aimed too much toward general laymen interest of the public. A topic as horrific as the Russian Civil War cannot be dealt with in such a conventional manner. Lincoln tells us what happened as opposed to why. The Whites get almost no attention and most of the work focuses on the Reds. This book is divided into sections 1918, 1919, 1920 ect... but there is almost no chronological order to the work and Lincoln jumps from the October Revolution to Cheka atrocities with no sense of transition. The White administration of territories and the White military unitis along with their regimental level commanders receive not attention at all. This book gives the impression that all Whites were nothing but a motley collection of disgrunteled front commanders from the German war, muderous rascists, and drug addicted psychotics. They were no saints but Trotsky and Lenin were just as bad...if not worse. The book is over long and actually gives more importance Stalin's terror in the late 30s then it does on the apocolyptic war at the front in 1919. The section on the Kronstad uprising should have been cut out altogeather and more focus should have been given to the Tambov peasant rising. Stick with Mawdsley's more academic and convincing work on this terrible tragedy.

Lincoln very engagingly takes the reader into the private memoirs of hundreds of principal characters, into the thinking of Lenin and Trotsky and Stalin, and into the changing and complex fabric of Russian life during its Civil War. Every page breathes the idea "revolution" as the cure-all in the Reds' minds for every ill in Russian society, while the Whites seem more bent on democracy or a dictatorship (like the tsarist days), so long as there was some kind of order, during a period when "corruption" was their own festering and ultimately destructive cancer. Politics, the maker of strange bedfellows, and a background as broad and as varied as Russia itself, make for key components in this fascinating examination of political theory and efforts at self-government on the heels of the First World War.

This is a great look at a bloody moment in Russian history. Fascinating, exciting, and well written, this is how hisotry should be written.

I've worked in the media departments of two major advertisers and a major advertising agency--and I use this book all the time when I need help on any training sessions I am conducting. It is very thorough with all information you need, but also concise enough not to get bogged down.

For my own use, I find the section on Media Planning Resources on the Internet and invaluable tool to find more information.

A must for any media planner's or buyer's bookshelf!

One of the mysteries of the UK ad scene is that there is no good, up-to-date, practitioner-written textbook on media planning, so the arrival of an updated version of an established US text is doubly welcome.

Jack Sissors and (mostly, as a result of Mr Sissor's ill-health) Roger Baron have done a very thorough and comprehensive job of explaining and illustrating the basics, from how to get information about any given medium to how to put together a strategy and a detailed plan.

Unsurprisingly, the material is purely US-based, and therefore includes, for example, considerable discussion of the problems of reconciling different area definitions; but analyses such as how to weight a plan by region or medium can apply, suitably modified, anywhere.

There is a wide range of suggestions for (mostly) websites from which to seek detailed information, some of which may be both unfamiliar and useful to non-US readers - the MPA's analysis of the effects of position and ad size in magazines is a good example....

Many of the references may seem old, but, as the authors make clear, they have gone back to the classic originals of basic thinking - and much of this still holds good today.

The new edition is up-to-date, with quite extensive discussion of the internet as a medium, and slightly more limited coverage of cross-media and multi-media planning. Conversely, data fusion barely gets a mention - and is not in the index. Nor are optimisers, which are not discussed in any detail - merely treated as a tool of the trade - or modelling, which gets a brief half page on p374.

If the book has a weakness, it is in the area of evaluation, which gets several mentions, but little detailed discussion. In an era where effectiveness has marched up advertisers' list of priorities, this may need addressing next time.

Nonetheless, any would-be media person should read it, and learn.

Roger Baron's book goes to great lengths to cover all the basics having to do with the media planning discipline. This book should be required reading for all entry level media professionalls as well as those considering a career in media planning. Well written, good flow. Highly recommended.

Even if publications like this are not written by millionaires, surely that's the audience they intend to reach. I can't blame the conservative public for wanting a rebuttal to assertions on issues such as environmentalism, civil liberties, racism, etc. that leftists might seem to have monopolized in the public consciousness. No position should go unchallenged as incontrovertible fact, especially not if the proof is so difficult to ascertain, as it is with global warming.

In reading books like this and Facts Not Fear: Teaching Children About the Environment, you get the feeling that conservative types see today's environmentalist establishment as some unpleasant amalgam of mamby-pamby peaceniks and humorless grown-up hall monitor killjoys who arbitrarily claimed authoritatively to know what is best for the planet. From the former's standpoint, all that was thought to be good and wholesome not so long ago (like red meat, driving, farming) has since been villified. What is a red-blooded American to do?

What makes books like these disappointing is the low road they seem to prefer. Not all environmentalists strive to kill the dreaded multinationals, spike trees and take away your driving privileges. Those that do tend to inflate figures and resort to scare tactics, but aren't likely to appeal to the better educated public. If it is necessary to inform the public that there is an alternate school of thought on ecology, the best way to present it is probably not to suggest that we are all living well, so let's just ignore the fact that 3 of the 10 most polluted locales in the world belong to the US. It seems that when the Right finally does get the microphone to present commentary on the state of the environment, instead of articulating, it chooses to play armpit noises. It might play to more of the audience, but only because it takes the seriousness out of an issue that the angry or insipid masses don't want to be bothered with. At least not until an environmental disaster hits them personally.

Academia probably won't have much use for Simon's work in this lifetime, but it doubtlessly has, and will have, an audience. If his purpose was just to preach to the choir, he succeeds, but it's not likely to reach beyond. It's disappointing, though, that this type of perspective represents so much money, yet all these resources cannot buy more informed, or at least persuasive authors.

Simon does his usual thing in this book as he debunks the bunked-up balderdash of the blinkered. His "Ultimate Resource" book, his book on "the State of Humanity" and his posthumous offering, "It's Getting Better All the Time" with Stephan Moore, all converge with the theme of exposing the political agenda under which the progressive Left operates as they disguise their true motives while waving their banner of concern for the environment. The recent publication by Bjorn Lomborg, "the Skeptical Environmentalist", just adds more fuel to Simon's fire. Lomborg has impeccable Leftist credentials as a former member of Greenpeace who also works as a professor in the political science department of a Danish University. He's just that oddity of oddities, an honest Leftist intellectual.

Lomborg set out to prove Simon wrong, but found him to be...drumroll...., to in fact, be right. Lomborg's shock parallels Ron Radosh's experience in setting out to prove the Rosenbergs innocent, but in fact finding that they were guilty. Both men have received scorn at the hands of the Far Left. They are made to be an un-person in true Stalinist style as they suffer the dispersement of disinformation at the hands of their former comrades. The rabbit is out of the hat, as Simon has always known, it's a political agenda that fuels almost all the environmental scare tactics of the Left and in no way does their agenda resemble a search for the truth.

Simon and Lomborg both used statistics and science, freely available in the public domain, leading Lomborg to question why so many environmental myths are so truculently lodged in the minds of the public? Just as Simon talks about the need for a "Truth Lobby" Lomborg was amazed at the closed minded religiosity of his friends who refused to believe, nor had an interest in discussing, his research findings. It is this compartmentalized-brain-syndrome that has consigned Simon's works to the dustbins of bookstores who continue to extol the virtues of always wrong, but presumably well intentioned, environmentalists such as Paul Erhlich of Stanford.

If we are fortunate enough to have a collective national awakening it will probably be because Simon's work, like Bach's music, will have been discovered at some later date in a more rational time in some collectors trunk in an attic, deep in the heart of the land of the fruits and the nuts.

It should be quite obvious to anyone with any real background in natural science, math, or perhaps just good old, non-hysterical common sense, that the earth isn't coming to an end. This book completely refutes the reasoning of the 1990s trend of screaming at "big business" for "destroying the planet". Face it folks, just 'cause Al Gore claims it's true, doesn't make it so. Global warming...Am I the only one who remembers the mid-1970s panic over "global cooling"? Back then, we were all going to die in a new ice age. People need to be scared about something new every 25 years or so. It seems to give them an excuse for their righteous rage, when all they really need is a couple of Prozac.

I was disapointed by this author because he allowed his biases towards Ann Rutledge reflect his views throughout the entire book, and was being unfair to Lincoln's wife in a number of ways, and continues to make far too many assumptions about their married life that were not true.

First off, this author bases his assumptions and views of Mary Todd on the two very authors that hate her; and this is obvious by his title under the heading: "His wife was a hellion." He bases this on his information about her by what these other two men had said, and does not generally come to his own conclusions about the matter. This is not fair to view someone with just
one lens. We have to take the positive with the negative.
Finally, he is bent on making Ann and Lincoln look like "saints" that he tears Mary Todd down, and refuses to let these biases
go. I want to read a book by a historian who puts more effort into making his argument less biased and his/her research on a more level plain; one who uses more sources and form their OWN opinion!

On a final note--I AM sick of always reading a NEGATIVE view of Mary Todd Lincoln. Considering the life she led, she deserves more credit than we give her. Her husband was no saint.

-Abe

I was quite thrilled when I saw this book in the bookstore. I have read numerous books on Abraham Lincoln, however, this was a perspective about his life I had not read much about. Words cannot describe how much I enjoyed reading this book. It was very well-written and engaging; enough so that it only took me two days to read it. I was captivated. Yes, at times the book seemed prejudicial against Lincoln's wife and biased in favour of Ann Rutledge, however his point of view was very interesting to note. I highly recommend this book to anyone willing to get a firm grasp on all aspects of Lincoln's life. It was just incredible!!!

It seems to me that a few reviews of this book have been extremely unfair, especially those by Mr. Emerson and someone who calls himself "kdpsyd." Mr. Winkler is an accomplished scholar and award-winning author who has written the first full-length book on this intriguing subject. I purchased the book after reading reviews from authoritative sources, and have found it to be extremely informative and fascinating. As "Civil War Times" noted, this book is "important and highly provocative and readable." "Civil War News" called it intriguing and engrossing and "quite thought-provoking. . . with careful notes and an impressive bibliography." "Today's Books," an independent report to the news media on the book-publishing industry rated this book "a best read." Such recognition is given only to "the top ten percent of new books published and distributed in America each year."

Building upon the latest published Lincoln scholarship, Mr. Winkler has developed startling new insights and added fresh information about Lincoln's New Salem years, including the most complete story in existence of Ann Rutledge's life and the
Lincoln-Rutledge romance.

The book is obviously based on solid research and should be read by anyone interested in what previously has been a puzzling aspect of Lincoln's life.