I have not bought this book as I would not let one penney fall into Garrison's pocket, but I've perused this volume heavily. I wish that I could have given it 0 stars. The author is an unreconstructed Confederate who, whenever there is a remotely possible sinister way of interpreting Lincoln's actions, prefers to submit that view rather than acknowledge the findings of recognized scholars' research. For example, he claims that Lincoln is responsible for the creation of the "Imperial Presidency", making possible the abuses of Nixon, Vietnam, etc. But he does not show that Lincoln's powers were often balanced by a war conduct committee, that the Presidency went on to lose considerable authority and esteem in the Reconstruction years, and that Lincoln himself acknowledged that, except in the case of national emergencies, as the Civil War was viewed, the President lacked powers to do many things (like the Emancipation Proclamation). Garrison also blames Lincoln for being uncompromising and contends, without proof, that the Confederacy's desire to continue as a separate nation would have faded, if allowed, resulting in reunification. But most scholars acknowledge that the individual states would have sooner seceded even further into smaller nations, and that other states in the Union would have found reason to secede into new confederacies. Thus, as I've said, Garrison's trash has been disproven yet he pretends as though it has not even been noticed by scholars. It is the vitriolic spite of an unenlightened Confederate clinging to the bitterness of ancestors. This book should be relegated to the heap of trash-writing never to be recovered.

Some may find the book ofensive.As Lincoln is one of the greatest American Presidents and heros of all time,but I think to read this book you need to keep an open mind.
Pople I think do not like for when histrorians and such dig through his hstory and prefer to enjoy the egnima that the man we all love is known today.
Having said that I would be weary reading this book if you have not read or done lots of resarch on the man.
I give this book three stars mostly becaouse I knew alot of the information that the book had ,but the point of view the author was giving was intersting.

This book is an excellent addition to anyone's library of books about this critical figure in American history. Unlike some reviewers, I actually bought, and read this book, and bothered to research some of the authors surprising assertions.

It amazes me how hysterical and insulting people will get when faced with facts about something contrary to what they are familiar with. So many Lincoln quotes, for instance, have long been known to be sheer fabrication; mythology, simply untrue and not originating from Lincoln at all. So many assertions about Lincoln's intentions and beliefs have been made that are utterly contrary to what Lincoln himself said and wrote. As with any historical figure, there are people that idolize and create myths, and there are those who are real historians, who actually do their homework. This book is a product of the work of a person in the latter category.

Shocking and contrary to what we were told as school children about Lincoln, the story of the real Lincoln is much more interesting and base than the myth makers would have us believe. Lincoln was, after all, a politician, a Statist, and a Federalist. He declared martial law, took away citizens basic constitutional rights, jailed newspaper reporters and statesmen that disagreed with him, and went against the founding father's explicit intentions as well as the Constitution and Bill of Rights in creating a massive, unrestricted, powerful centralized federal government. Lincoln, as it turns out, was no saint after all. The real story is always grittier and more interesting than the fantasy. If you want a taste of the real Lincoln, and if you are capable of dealing with some unpleasant facts about the man and the legend, read this book, it's a good start.

I have always had an interest in St. Petersburg, Russia. I believe that stems from the wonderful depiction of the city given by Feodor Dostoevsky in "Crime and Punishment." Dostoevsky made St. Petersburg come alive more than any writer has made any other city do so.

So, it was with great interest that I bought W. Bruce Lincoln's "Sunlight at Midnight." This is the first biography of St. Petersburg that I have seen.

Unfortunately, my interest turned to displeasure almost from the start of the book. The subtitle to "Sunlight at Midnight" is "St. Petersburg and the Rise of Modern Russia." It could more aptly be subtitled "An Artistic and Architectural History of St. Petersburg with Some Other Interesting Historical Stuff Thrown In." The first chapter, "The Builders", is not an account of the struggles to build a capital city out of the swamps but an exhaustive account of the architects who built early St. Petersburg and their creations. It also contains a mind numbing account of the various styles used in the city and how they routinely changed as Russia's tsars came and went.

I accept that any city's biography will have an account of its cultural and intellectual life. I even look forward to such expositions. St. Petersburg has had an exceptional history in that regard. However, I would estimate that fully two-fifths of "Sunlight at Midnight" is given over to such study. This is too much, especially for a city such as St. Petersburg, which was the economic and bureaucratic center of an enormous empire.

Things do not get better after the first chapter. Lincoln does begin to discuss more of the non-cultural history of the city; but, he breaks it up periodically with a return to the cultural aspects of St. Petersburg's history. He never allows any kind of momentum to flow because he is constantly breaking it up by bouncing around from subject to subject.

Lincoln does give a good account of the German siege of the city during World War II but even that is not completely satisfying as he tends to concentrate on how the siege affected life amongst the intelligentsia of the city instead of the maneuvers made by the Germans and Russians to both capture the city and to defend it.

The worst mistake that Lincoln makes is with his final chapter. He makes the most blatant mistake any historian can make by summing up. The final chapter is a summary of most of what you have read over the previous chapters. If it were that easy to sum up the things I had just read, then why did I just go through the trouble of reading through everything you just wrote? is the obvious question one asks when a historian makes this blunder.

Lincoln also has the terrible habit of someone who is too close to his subject of trying to convince us that Petersburgers are somehow different from everyone else on the face of the planet. During his account of the German siege, he seems to be intimating that no other people in the world could have come through this siege in the same way that Petersburgers did. He imbues them with a superhuman capacity for sacrifice and suffering that he seems to think is found no where else in the world. The only thing unique about Petersburgers is their city's history, which Lincoln has done a great disservice with this book.

Lincoln's "Sunlight at Midnight" has some excellent moments, but is frequently superficial and a little dull. The book is primarily a cultural history of St Petersburg, featuring the usual cast of writers (Pushkin, Gogol, Belyi), poets (Blok, Akhmatova, Brodsky), and composers (Tchaikovsky, Shostakovich). The Romanov rulers and their tastes in architecture are discussed extensively, as are the Soviets and their tastes in censorship.

The first three chapters are primarily a cultural history of imperial Russia following Peter the Great's reign. They deal mostly in court affairs and architects, neither of which are particularly interesting. Next come descriptions of Petersburg's literary and musical history, which are spotty and do not compare well with the detail of Solomon Volkov's "St Petersburg".

The tone changes abruptly when we reach the late nineteenth century, and the reliance on artistic sources gives way to a more popular account of the revolutionary period. Events are well presented but the story is told too quickly. The months between abdication and Bolshevik takeover, for example, pass in a single paragraph. I would have gladly exchanged twenty early pages on the styles of palace facades for some details of the provisional government's failure and the October coup.

The chapter on the Leningrad siege is a masterpiece of narrative history, but the book unfortunately returns to cultural matters and Soviet repression of artists in the postwar period. This is interesting stuff, but not remotely as gripping as the events of the previous decades and written in a cursory style more suited to a review for a knowledgeable reader.

It was with great sadness that I learned of the death of W. Bruce Lincoln, one of my favorite writers of history. His works on Russia have given me, time and again, new insight into that country, its people and history. This last work is another excellent example of his writing, marred only by what I think is some poor editing. I don't know at what stage of this work Mr. Lincoln died, but it appears that, if he had survived through the final editing stage this book would have been in a different form. There are more than a few redundancies, which should have been picked up by an alert editor, and I'm sure would have been by the author if he had been around to do so. That criticism aside, I thoroughly enjoyed this work, once again learning many new things about the Russian psyche, as brought forth through the history of St. Petersburg. There may be a bit too much about architecture in this work, but I consider it a "work in progress" that will now, unfortunately, never get into the final shape its author intended. It's a loss for all of us.

What a disappointment this book was. A subject so rich and so poorly presented. It was an empty account of history. For a layman hard to group into one of the greatest accomplishments of the United States. Too many loose ends, stories start and in the middle another subject is injected, a couple pages later you find the conclusion. The conditions of the city and the people from 1945 to 1948 not researched enough to give an understanding what really happen in the years before the Blockade. The currency reform was the final straw, but not the whole picture. The Kommandatura meetings the author refers to with the 4 powers don't shine any light on the subject. Also he never took the time to question the population of the city, the feelings, the hardships and how we accomplished our daily lives under conditions beyond imagination. Ruth Andreas-Friedrich was the only person to express some opinions, but she was not the mainstream of the 2 1/2 million people that lived in the city. She left Berlin in the middle of the Airlift for "Freedom", we had freedom in Berlin because of the support of the free world. I'm a born Berliner and lived through every phase. I worked for USGroupCC, Omgus and Special Troops in Onkel Toms Huette, also attended the performance of Bob Hope in the Titania Palast, what lasted over 4 hours, well past midnight. Have several excellent books on the subject to remind my children what was my life experience, but this one was written without understanding the whole picture, the sacrifices the men made to save a city and keep the iron curtain from descending all over Europe.

Michael Haydock provides a significant addition to the history of the cold war. This book is a seamless review of the role Berlin played during the critical years that ran from the end of World War II until the fall of the Berlin Wall. Haydock mirrors Berlin against the larger global events of the period. The central focus of the manuscript is, simply, how a city the size of Philadelphia survived complete destruction by the Soviet Army and rose again from the ashes in search of self determination.

With Berlin as the backdrop, the author uses three themes in weaving the story. The first theme outlines the strategic decision making which contrasts the leadership of the Allies and the Soviet Union during the Berlin crisis. A stark difference emerges immediately. The democratically elected leaders of the Allies set the strategy. For example, President Truman said, "we stay," and turned the formation of policy over to his appropriate cabinet members. General Marshall, Secretary of State and James Forrestal, Secretary of Defense, set broad policy which protected the strategic interest of the United States and delegated operational decisions to command officers in the field. Generals Clay, LeMay, Tunner, and their staffs made the tactical decisions while keeping Washington briefed. The author goes to great lengths to show how those in the field made the big decisions with minimal interference from the highest level.

Decision making by the Soviet Union was the opposite. Haydock uses extensive documentation from a variety of sources to illustrate Soviet decision making as a highly rigid, centralized system that required all matters to be cleared with Moscow - that is, with Stalin. Such tightly controlled decision making begged for delay as every action went back to Moscow for a reaction.

The second theme is operational or tactical. Haydock goes to great lengths to describe the birth, growth, and triumph of the Berlin Airlift. As the Soviets closed the surface routes to Berlin, a hasty effort to supply the city by air was made by the area commanders. The question, "can it be done?" was not addressed; however, the question, "how can we do it?" was a constant for the next six months. One could classify the beginning air supply effort as long on optimism and short on reality. On Saturday, July 26, 1948, a collection of C-47s made thirty-four flights into Templehof with 80 tons of food and medicine. The Berlin Airlift had commenced.

Manpower and material began to flow to the operational bases in West Germany. General Tunner arrived to provide leadership. The C-54s began to arrive from bases all over the world. The "bicycle chain" was applied to the corridors which kept a steady stream of aircraft moving toward the landing fields in Berlin and back to the supply airfields. January, 1949, was a critical month. The weather was bad and the City was down to twelve days of food and coal. On Easter Sunday, 1949, flying at one minute intervals, 1,398 flights, lifted 12,941 tons into Berlin in a twenty-four hour period. The Soviets lifted the blockade on May 12, 1949, but air operations continued until September. One could argue that the Airlift was the greatest humanitarian effort the world has seen, demonstrating good leadership, diplomatic steadiness, and peaceful use of airpower can advance the strategic interests of a nation.

The third theme weaves human interest stories into the larger mosaic of the Airlift. Into every day of this monumental effort, Haydock finds a story that brings this huge operation down to the human level. For example, Lieutenant Gail Halverson's dropping little parachutes containing chocolate candy to the chldren of Berlin - and going down in history as the "Candy Bomber." Or Ruth Andreas-Friedrich describing the Soviet sacking of the city and the associated fear as the survivors hovered in the bombed out buildings.

City Under Siege is a well documented, clearly written description of one of the great events of the century. Highly recommended reading for those interested in history, foreign policy, humanitarian efforts, and especially for those who participated.

This book is really bad. Dry, long, small type, Don't buy it

"The Lincoln/Douglas Debates" is a collection of speeches and debates that two candidates for the U.S. Senate in Illinois, Stephen Douglas and Abraham Lincoln, held in the summer and fall of 1858. This edition is a fantastic anthology of transcribed debates that focused on the issues of slavery, popular government, and popular sovereignty. It is interseting to notice how Lincoln gains in prominence as the debates progress and the extent to which both of these men discuss important moral and constitutional issues in the setting of small towns in Illinois. This text is absolutely essential for understanding the Civil War as well as American history and politics.

Morris uses this book to take cheap shots at America and America leaders. Obviously, she has no personal knowledge of Lincoln. Her attacks are based on hearsay and stereotypess of America. Like many English writers, she thinks we are all yahoos and cowboys. Someone should remind her that those yahoos and cowboys have been subsidizing England since 1916, saved it from defeat in WW I and WW II, rebuilt its economy, landed men on the moon and won the cold war. A recent poll showed that 45% of the English would move to America if they had an opportunity. Instead of attacking us, Morris should focus her ascerbic wit on the degenerate Rnglish royal family and landed aristocracy. and the feckless Labour Party.

I have had a vague dislike of the English literary class for so long, I sometimes forget why. Jan Morris is a good reminder. The main thrust of her book is that she once believed that Abraham Lincoln was like the grape jelly she found in American restaurants; generally liked by Americans but lacking all character and certainly inferior to marmalade. In her "quest" she makes the amazing discovery that Lincoln was a somewhat complex man who was more mature at 50 than at 20 and who found the strength to take this country through the Civil War...and that's not bad for an ugly piece of trailer trash. In the course of her meanderings, she takes gratuitous potshots at various aspects of what she sees as America. Twice, with no support, she refers to Lincoln's probable homosexuality and even identifies his lover for us. The book is almost readable when Morris doesn't intrude on her writing but, without her intrusions, it is just a standard bio and probably wouldn't have been published. So the literary hook here is that we get to see an interesting contrast between a great person and a trivial one, with the author's complete lack of self-awareness serving as a running, inside joke.

a late 1990's exploration and analysis of lincoln from the eyes and research of a british writer. why she includes grape jelly inthis book may be a clever writing tool but it was a more of a put-off than a lead-into the book. her reference to lincoln possibly having homosexual tendicies as a result of his awkwardness with women is an eye opener. some good stuff is how she reveals that lincoln was a little more cut throat than what history portrays him as and that is a refreshing peice of information because you had to always wonder if lincoln was a shrewd and cunning enough type of guy to maneuver thru the politicis of his day. obviously he was. also--where we learn that there may have been a northern backed assasination attempt on jefferson davis' life that failed but may have resulted in booth's vengeful inspiration to assasinate lincoln is very interesting. not a bad read really if you are open to a different viewpoint.

The Lincoln Brigade fought ON the side of the Communist Left ( Republicans) and participated in the many attrocities such as executions of the clergy, press,ect. They were funded by Eleanor Roosevelt who was a "closet" Communist,trained and sent to Spain to help send Spain into the Soviet orbit.

Interesting, if for no other reason than to see for yourself the nature of the "true believers" of the Left. We now know that Americans participated in Stalin-inspired Trotskyite hunts within the ranks of the International Brigades. While Merriman almost certainly met his end at a Nationalist firing squad, how many American Reds met their end at Merriman's orders? The writing style of the book was in the nature of a justification of a cause that was morally bankrupt, even in the context of fighting fascism. I recommend the book to anyone who wishes to better understand the mindset of liberal thinking . . .

"American Commander in Spain" is a vivid account of the last years in the life of Robert Merriman. The book was written by his wife, who followed Merriman when he went to fight in the Spanish Civil War. The book will not be helpful to the profesional historian, save perhaps a few anecdotes that could link specific historical characters to specific places during the war. The book is also not a novel and cannot be read as a work with high literary intentions. Rather it is an interesting portrait of a man whose life has the special quality of blending reality and legend. Merriman became fiction when Hemingway, who met him during the war used him as the basis for his character Robert Jordan in "For whom the bell tolls." The work will therefore be of most interest to those readers looking for the sources where Literature drinks from Life and with some emotional attachment to the historical context.

...For when one reads about Robert Merriman it becomes clear that he was an american patriot searching for solutions to get his own country out of the Depression and later trying to stop the rise of Fascism in Europe. That his countrymen were so blind then (and it seems still now) cost them dearly in WWII. The insensitivity shown by these reviewers hurts most those of us who look up to the american volunteers in awe, not for their ideological beliefs, but for their sense of sacrifice and love for freedom. It is a sin against Humanity to see Merriman's death any other way. If there is a God and these other reviewers are ever judged, I only hope that all their sins will be remembered.

Lincoln idoloters will inevitably try to manufacture something to idolize in this tragic, dark, tormented figure whose desperation was so great that Alfted Taylor Bledsoe, who resided at Globe Tavern simultaneously with the Lincolns, whose law office was next to Lincoln, who joined with Lincoln in Whig politican, and who taught Lincoln the use of the broadsword when Lincoln's indiscretion caught him in the Shield's affair, could only bring forth the deepest empathy for his suffering. It was Mrs. Bledsoe who carried for Mrs. Lincoln and Robert Lincoln post-partum. And, it was Dr. Bledsoe whose monumental Was Davis a Traitor (1968) reveals as well an any the shaky and erronous philosophical base of Mr. Lincoln's perversion of the constitutional compact. Lincoln, a despairing infidel, a spiritualist, a rabid story steller and ranconteur, a white supremist and segregationist, but masterful in argument before a jury and, in fact, honest in personal dealings, the type of person who, according to Dr. Bledsoe, did not so much as plant a tree at his dwelling.

I knew this book was coming out months in advanced and looked forward to it,because I consider Abraham Lincoln a great President. Sadly this book not only insults the readers but the President with the little content, 124 pages and really less when when consider that includeds acknowledgements and Notes. The cover price of $30.00 dollars is an absolute rip-off and if the author and the publisher did not realise this then they are incompetent, but I am presuming that they did know this, so that makes them greedy. This book came out for the holidays,so the publisher must be hoping that it is bought as a gift for someone who is hard to shop for, if you do buy this as a gift you have even less respect for the intended recipient than the publisher and the author have for us. Please buy something else as a gift.

I hope you all have a very safe and very Merry Christmas.

Noted Historian Donald, the author of the classic "Lincoln" biography, has adequately captured the kindness and inner beauty of our 16th President and his love of family in this slim, but well-written volume.

The book is divided into two parts, an essay written originally as a speech before former President Bush on Lincoln's domestic life in the White House - how he and the First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln coped with the agony of war and the tragic loss of their son Willie.

The second part of the book comprises all of the known letter correspondence between President Lincoln, and his wife and sons - and vice versa. Here we find that Robert Lincoln clearly was not too thrilled about his father becoming the Republican Presidential nominee in 1860, how Abraham Lincoln clearly fussed and agonized over son's Tad's missing (but eventually found) goat, all the more poignant because of Willie's death, and the tragic fire that claimed Willie's pony (not mentioned in this book). Or how Lincoln seemingly dispassionately mentioned in his correspondence to his wife the loss of Mary Todd Lincoln's Brother-In-Law, the Confederate General Ben Hardin Helm at the battle of Chickamauga.

Donald has given us a beautifully presented and written book, a worthy gift to the Lincoln and Civil War reader - the only reason why I gave it four stars instead of five was that it is too pricey for a non fleshed-out biography, but would definitely be worth the fifth star at a bargain-based price.

It seemed like such a good concept -- parallel bios of the two great antagonists of the Civil War. However, after a promising beginning, this book becomes so wildly inaccurate and in parts so "Oliver Stone-ish" that I personally will submit my copy for recycling rather than allow anyone else to read it. Some errors are errors of detail (the General commanding the Confederate troops on Marye's Heights at Fredericksburg was James Longstreet, not "Stonewall" Jackson). Some are chronological. Chadwick places Jackson's Shenandoah Valley Campaign after the Seven Days' battles, where in reality it was the indispensible prelude. Sometimes the chronology becomes so muddled that events seem to occur twice. The way the text reads, it seems that Union General John Pope was beaten at Second Bull Run twice. And can anyone truly imagine Salmon Chase leading Union forces in the field?

I was particularly disturbed by the assertion that Ohio "Peace Democrat" Clement Vallandigham was arrested on President Lincoln's authority. Every other source I've ever seen asserts that General Burnside acted without any authority other than his own, and that he quickly received orders to arrest no other politicians and suppress no more newspapers without consulting Washington first. What evidence did Chadwick find that eluded Allen Nevins, Shelby Foote, and Stephen B. Oates (to name but three) missed?

When Chadwick comes to the Kilpatrick/Dahlgren raid to Richmond, things get very worrisome for anyone who's read much Civil War history (and I have). No one else that I have have read has ever asserted that the raid's purported goal of killing or kidnapping Jefferson Davis and/or other members of his administration was authorized by Abraham Lincoln himself. What evidence has Chadwick unearthed that hundreds if not thousands of other historians had never found? In addition, Chadwick is the only author that I have read that flatly pronounces the papers purportedly found on Ulric Dahlgren's body genuine. All others have at least acknowledged the possibility that they were forgeries. (For the record, incidently, Judson Kilpatrick's not-too-flattering nickname was "Kill Cavalry", not "Kill Patrick".)

I gave up on this book at page 340. My time is too precious to waste it on conspiritorial pseudo-history. I'll bet yours is , too.

Where's the Beef?

With all of the attention lavished by historians on Abraham Lincoln, and with the growing number of works on Jefferson Davis, it is curious that there have been so few comparative studies of the two men. Aside from Bruce Catton's Two Roads To Fort Sumter (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1963), and a few scattered articles and monographs, no scholar of the Civil War has attempted a comprehensive, systematic comparison of Lincoln and Davis. Bruce Chadwick has attempted to fill this hole with The Two American Presidents.

As the title suggests, this is a dual biography, a two-track narrative which switches back and forth between Lincoln's and Davis's stories. These twin narratives are not bad history in the sense of being inaccurate or sloppy. Chadwick wrote competently and with occasional dramatic flair, he made good use of the available primary sources, and he utilized an impressive amount of newspaper research. A casual reader without much prior knowledge of the Civil War could read The Two American Presidents and come away with a basic understanding of each man's life and career.

But Chadwick really unearthed nothing new about either man; his book is for the most part merely a pedestrian rehashing of oft-told tales. His story of Lincoln follows the standard arc which one could find in a dozen other biographies: Lincoln the savvy politician and prairie lawyer with the large measure of common sense who is smarter than most everyone around him, and who is dedicated to finding a pragmatic means to the idealistic end of killing slavery and establishing a new birth of freedom. Likewise, Chadwick's Jefferson Davis is not very original: he is the Calhounian planter and Mexican war hero who never questions slavery; a principled yet rigid man who relentlessly pursues Confederate victory but is hobbled by serious character flaws and political ineptitude. Chadwick's narrative is sprightly, but in the end this is still old wine in a new bottle. It is so old, in fact, that I found very little material worthy of substantive criticism; hence the brevity of this review.

According to the book's dust jacket, Chadwick argues that "one of several reasons why the North won and the South lost can be found in the drastically different characters of the two presidents." This is perhaps a reasonable--though by no means foregone--conclusion. It is not the "fascinating new perspective" and "startling answers" the book's jacket claims; Davis Potter made this exact argument forty years ago in a widely read essay which Chadwick does not cite (see Potter, "Jefferson Davis and the Political Factors of Confederate Defeat," in David Donald, ed., Why the North Won the Civil War [New York: Collier, 1960]).

But where does Chadwick draw these conclusions, let alone support them with evidence? I have quoted the book jacket at some length because in 490 pages of text I was unable to locate anything resembling an actual argument. The Two Presidents is a comparative study with no substantive comparative analysis. Chadwick seems to have assumed that the mere placing of a mediocre biography of Davis and a mediocre biography of Lincoln within the same cover somehow constitutes an "argument," an original contribution. It does not.

Chadwick somehow missed the point of his own book. The only value such a study might possess would lie in the new light it shed on either Lincoln and Davis themselves, or on larger subjects -- presidential leadership, for example -- which are illuminated by but transcend the two men's individual stories. Chadwick did neither, and in the end wrote a book which is of little real value to serious scholars of Lincoln, Davis or the Civil War.

Reviewed by Brian Dirck, Assistant Professor of History, Anderson University . Published by H-South (September, 2000)

Copyright © 2000, H-Net, all rights reserved. This work may be copied for non-profit educational use if proper credit is given to the author and the list. For other permission questions, please contact hbooks@h-net.msu.edu.

I am sure people who are interested in the American history of the latter part of the 19th century will find this book useful.

The Tragic Era was considered a legitimate text book during the Depression and for many years afterward. However its historical view is pro-confederate, racist, and totally propagandistic. In this book you will find the arguement that slaves were happy and treated well, that after the Civil War the evil Northerners raped and pillaged the South unmercifully for 12 years, and that the angelic white men of the South only became racially bigoted because it was forced on them by the uppity freed slaves. This piece of trash is on the same quality level as Mein Kampf. If you want a realistic exploration of the Reconstruction period read Kenneth M. Stampp's "The Era of Reconstruction".

It has become fashionable to cheer on the Reconstruction radicals and carpetbaggers who turned what might have been a period of healing and growth into a nightmare for many dispossessed Southerners. Read this (slightly creaky) old classic for a corrective view -- one that portrays William Lloyd Garrison, Thaddeus Stevens, et al as the zealous Utopian totalitarians that they were. V.S. Naipaul would understand this book.

Here are my thoughts on this book.

Pros: 1. Very reasonably priced as a comprehensive review book and supposedly a money back guarantee.
2. It is current and up to date (as of the April 2003 exam)
3. It has a pretty good variety and quantity of examples and practice problems.

Cons: 1. There are a large number of errors in the example and practice problems. I found at least 50 errors in using this book as a review guide and it is difficult, especially on some of the example problems where I would wonder for half an hour where I went wrong. Some of the errors are obvious, others are difficult or near impossible to spot if you are trying to relearn this material and remember very little. I am sure there are significantly more errors since my review did not cover the book comprehensively and I'm sure I missed a lot as well.
2. The text is not very well written. Some sections go into too much detail while others simply scratch the surface. There were times when I learned more from reading the EIT handbook than from this review book.
3. Lastly, I was a little disappointed when I went to take the practice exam and I found several identical questions to the practice problems provided in the different chapters. The least they could have done was make sure not to reuse questions so that when we'd like to take the practice exam we haven't just seen the questions from review sections.