I have visited Fredericksburg many times and always visit the herb farm. This book gives wonderful recipes of their delectable foods. A special bonus of the book is the beautiful paper and printing.

How many bits of precious history have been forgotten or lost. Fredericksburg,Virginia author Anne Brooks Brauer, whose family has been part of Virginia history for three centuries, has made certain the information they carefully saved throught the generations will be preserved. Stories of The American Navy in the War of the American Revolution. State owned ships and battles. The famed "Battle of Fredericksburg in 1862" as told by a Confederate Veteran who fought there. Original manuscript of the Confederates tale. Many other family stories that go back to 1710 in Falmouth, Va. when it was a sea port. A real potpourri of memories to entice the reader. This book is nominated for State Award at Virginia State Library in Sept.1999

These series of books are the best available resource for conducting ACW battlefield tours - assuming that your purpose in touring battlefields is to study and understand the applicable tactics, strategy and terrain and to develop an appreciation for the objectives and efforts of the participants. If you go to ACW battlefields to gawk and gossip as an everyday tourist then you do not need to study these guides. If you have an active interest in ACW history, military history in general or fascinating chapters in human history, then these guides are remarkable values, "Best Buys". Thorough but not intimidating, insightful and objective, with no deficiencies noted.

This is an excellent book for anyone researching their ancestors in these counties of Virginia. There are two indexes in this book,one by grooms and the other by bride. This makes it very easy for you to find your male and female ancestors. It also in many instances gives parents of the bride, ages of persons, and whether a person was a widower.

Francis Augustin O;Reilly's new book on Fredricksburg is well researced,well written and detailed in its micro-history approach to the Union defeat at the hand of Lee's Legions in December, 1862. O'Reilly's book is a military account of the battle eschewing the sociological implications of the battle delineated so well in George C. Rable's recent bestseller.
I enjoyed both books but would recommend Rable's book for the reader who has a general interest in the battle and doesn't care for detailed accounts of military strategy.
O'Reilly's book will be the standard military account for years to come. This impressive young historian now stands in the ranks of Robert K. Krick, Gordon Rhea and Peter Cozzens in the brilliant way he tells the story of the battle. Maps were helpful to the text (although more maps could always be used!). He did make the mistake of saying Lee's birtday was on Jan. 21 when the general was born on Jan. 19th.
Fredricksburg was the last complete battle where the gray legions were led by the peerless tandem of Lee and Jackson. The battle featured the first urban street fighting on a major scale in the Civil War. Fredricksburg also saw widespread looting by Union troops on a heretofore unprecedented scale.
Anyone planning to tour Fredricksburg should read this book. O'Reilly tells us of the important fighting on Prospect Hill and the slaughter before Marye's Heights (two separate battles).
I would enjoy hearing O'Reilly speak at our Civil War Round Table in Knoxville or on Book TV! I am impressed by this outstand author and Civil War scholar! An excellent work!

I was very excited when I heard that there would be a good old-fashioned campaign study of Fredericksburg coming out, and after reading it, I can honestly say it was worth the wait. The author is quite knowledgable about his subject, and I learned a great deal about the battle that I did not know before. The writing is quite good and very readable; O'Reilly is good at giving a sense that "you are there". He takes you through the entire campaign, from the construction of the pontoons and the confusing battle in the town, to the final grand assalts. He makes the interesting observation that there were really two separate battles on that winter day: the familiar one at Marye's Heights, and the often overlooked main effort at Prospect Hill. The Prospect Hill chapters were fascinating; I had no idea of scope of the savage fighting that occurred there. O'Reilly also gives ample space to Pelham's artillery duel on the Union flank, which has always been one of my favorite stories. He lets the soldiers themselves speak through diary entries and period accounts, which greatly enhances the realism. Also, the maps are quite good and certainly help to add to the comprehension of the battle. If you enjoy such authors as Earl Hess, Gordon Rhea, and John Hennessy then you will be right at home with this work. Highly recommended as the definitive account to fill the Fredericksburg void on your bookshelf.

I am a cavalry historian, and for years, I have found little of interest in the Fredericksburg Campaign. When I heard that Frank O'Reilly, whom I have known for a number of years, was working on a truly detailed tactical study of the Fredericksburg Campaign, I began looking forward to reading it.

Frank has done a superb job of chronicling the events of November and December 1862, casting a critical eye on the conduct of a battle that probably should never have been fought. Utilizing a vast array of sources and with a well-written narrative, Frank O'Reilly has done justice to a campaign that has long required a detailed tactical analysis.

I think that this is one of the finest campaign studies in years, on a par with the superb work of Gordon Rhea.

In the early 1990s, I saw Ken Burn's CIVIL WAR
series on PBS, and was interested to see as part
of that series commentaries by an easy-going
"propah" Mississippi gentleman named Shelby Foote.

Foote turned out to be something of the godfather
of the series, since Burns had been influenced
by Foote's monumental three-volume history of the
war, titled simply THE CIVIL WAR. I picked up
the three volumes, beginning a ten-year exercise
in writing up notes and going through other

materials to figure out the war. Having completed
this exercise, except for tying up some loose
ends, I figure it's time to reflect on the books
that started it all.

The first thing is that this is basically one of
the essential books to read on the Civil War if
you want to get into the subject in reasonable
detail. It is a work of proverbial grand breadth
and scope, engrossing and inspiring, that gives
the reader a real feel for the conflict.

However, it is important to point out that Foote's
THE CIVIL WAR has some limitations as well. The
biggest is that it is mostly a battlefield history,
minimizing the social and political framing of the
conflict. For example, Frederick Douglass is not
mentioned once, at least as far as the index is
concerned. It also tends to lean somewhat more towards
the rebel point of view, though Foote apologizes for
this, portraying it as "sympathy for the underdog",
and the book is by no means unfair to the Union side.

The other issue is that this is a novelistic and
relatively unstructured work. This is fine in a
sense, since it makes it very entertaining to
read, and it's not like it's haphazard by any
means -- it's just a little like following a
big, slow-moving, meandering river. The problem
is that it can make keeping track of details and
chronology difficult, which is what led me to the
note-taking exercise ... which I never figured
would drag out for ten years.

The biggest complaint about Foote that I can make
is that he occasionally fails to be redundant when
it would make life much easier for the reader.
He will sometimes make references to minor incidents
from hundreds of pages previous as if the reader has
a perfect memory of them, leaving the reader
scrambling through the index, which is a particular
nuisance if the item is in a previous volume.

This is a quibble. This is essential reading
for anyone with a major interest in the war, though
given its limitations I wouldn't say it should be
the only book on the subject to be read.

Why don't they teach American History in public schools? The Civil War was mentioned in the text books of my day, the mid-20th century, but is scarcely referred to today.
To fill this void, those who want to truly be educated must do independent reading. Having just completed the first volume of Shelby Foote's trilogy (Ft. Sumter to Perryville) I have become an avid Civil War history buff. In the past month I drove to Virginia in order to visit the Fredricksburg, Chancellorsville, and Wilderness battlefields. I anticipate I will visit others in the future.
I also discovered that the National Park Service has listings of Union and Confederate soldiers. I have been able to identify 35 Union and 8 Confederate soldiers related to me, and the regiments in which they served.
The detailed accounts of the campaigns and pitched battles in this book surpass anything else I have read about the Civil War. Shelby Foote's narratives bring the war to life.
The most surprising element I found in the book was the account of political infighting among the general officers on both sides.
The only criticism I have of the writing is that the reader sometimes finds he has been reading about the activities of a particular individual for two or three pages in which the person is always referred to as "he" and it is sometimes necessary to backtrack and see who "he" is.

Perhaps the greatest accolade I heard of Shelby Foote's involvement with the PBS mini-series "The Civil War" was the admiring comment that he seemed to have been there. I feel very much the same way about this epic 3-volume set. McPhearson's "Battle Cry of Freedom" may be the standard one-volume history of the Civil War, and a fine work it is, but it offers nowhere near the feeling of proximity to people and events as does this massive labor of love. Foote is so good at so many of the writer/historian's crafts that combine to make this trilogy essential Civil War reading. His skill at bringing a novelist's eye to this material has already been frequently noted. But he also has a wonderful way of giving a reader the feeling for the terrain on which battles were fought, for the ebb and flow of those battles, for the character of the men involved (and what characters! the proud, obstinante Jeff Davis, the rugged, unwashed Grant, the patrician Lee, the moody, tragic Lincoln--who would dare invent them? Yet Foote brings them, and dozens more, to breathing life). He conveys equally well the movement of troops as he does ideas--not to mention the sights, sounds, smells of the era, be they on the battlefield, in the army camp, or the White House. These are books that I will turn to again and again (I just got done re-reading volume 3), because, like no one else, Shelby Foote not only makes me feel like he was there, but that *I* was too.

A great collection of essays by those historians most familiar with the Battle of Fredericksburg. Burnsides excellent biographer, Wiliam Marvel, writes a very balanced essay on Burnside and his high command that was still full of McClellan political generals and some that were inept. Burnside shares blame for failed opportunities but was primarily let down by Franklin who proved to be incapable or neglectful in providing a strong attack on the Confederate right that was necessary to attack the heights of the town on the confederate left. The objective critic of Lee, Alan Nolan, writes an essay substantiating why this battle was Lee's greatest and how Longstreet was so capable that his great critic Douglas Freeman had to praise him. A. William Greene who spent many years with the park service at Fredericksburg (he's now at the new Pamplin Civil War Museum in Petersburg) writes of Burnside's last and lost attempt at continuing the campaign, the mud march. Difficult in bad weather but made worse by the political generals who contributed willingly to his failure. The other essays contribute to the realities of war, the carnage and the effect on Civilians and how the virtually destroyed Pennyslvania Division were later to shout "Remember Fredericksburg" at Gettysburg.

Your review of Gallagher's book on the Battle of Fredericksburg has the date wrong. It was fought on Dec. 13, 1862, not 1863.

I have waited a long time for an adequate, contemporary treatment of the Fredericksburg campaign. Alas, I am still waiting. In fairness to Professor Rable, he does state in the prologue that, unlike other campaign books, he intends to put Fredericksburg in the proper political and social context. Civil War campaign reading is my area of specialty and having read over 20 such accounts I would have to say that not only is his thesis statement unfair, but incorrect.
He also states the need to look at both sides, then virtually ignores Confederate planning, preparation, and battle conduct (except as reaction to certain Union activity). Perhaps his comments about literacy shortcomings among southern ranks is a good example of less than balanced treatment. He talks about poor grammar and phonetically misspelled words by Rebel soldiers then fills the book with examples written by Union soldiers.
After looking at the massive bibliography that pays tribute to his painstaking research and wonderful primary source material uncovered, my expectations were high. However, Rable's material becomes redundant and instead of enjoying fascinating tidbits about the famous and their historical context, I felt like a victim of historical name-dropping. Who cares what Karl Marx thought about the war?
Perhaps this work should be two or three different books, or even a series of essays. One thing that it isn't is a campaign treatment of the Battle of Fredericksburg. It is amazing that a 400+ page... book can lack focus - but it does! The classic example of this is when he suggests that a ..."postmortem discussion over tactical fine points is...irrelevant." Why then write a 435 page book? Indeed, why write history at all?

I have been waiting for some time for a decent book to be published on the Civil War battle at Fredericksburg, now within a matter of months two very good accounts have appeared on the market. I must admit that it took me awhile to decide which book to purchase out of the two releases but in the end the weight of the reviews at Amazon guided me towards 'Fredericksburg! Fredericksburg!' by George Rable. I am thankful for those reviewers who posted their opinions on this book at Amazon; it made my decision a little easier.

I quite enjoyed this account which as many of the previous reviewers have indicated is not just a campaign history of Fredericksburg but more of a micro social and military history of the men who fought this terrible battle. I found the details of the soldier's life very interesting and I enjoyed the author's description of the battle a great deal. It must be stated as it has in the reviews below, that the battle is not covered in great depth. However out of the 435 pages of narrative we get a full account of how this terrible battle affected not only the soldiers who fought it but also their political masters and the civilians at home.

The book offers more than just a military history of this battle; it provides the reader with a real insight into the life of a Civil War soldier. I was amazed with many of the first-hand accounts offered in the narrative and I really enjoyed reading about these men, both from the Federal and Confederate perspective. In the end I didn't notice that the actual account of the battle only took up a quarter of the book. The narrative is lively and full of interesting antidotes, both from soldiers and civilians alike.

A number of maps and black & white illustrations were provided and all were of a decent standard (a nice change!). For those who are interested the author has also provided an Order-of-Battle at the end of the book and over 130 pages of references and notes. Overall this is a very decent Civil War history and I think that most readers will enjoy this account of Fredericksburg.

George C. Rable explains in his prologue that he sought a blending of what he characterizes the "old" military history (dealing largely with leaders and dissecting strategy and tactics) and the "new" (focused on soldier life and its connections to larger social themes). And, I think it is fair to say, he well achieved that blending in "Fredericksburg! Fredericksburg!" Combat operations are competently described, albeit not in deep detail. Where Rable excels is in providing what might be called the "context" of the campaign, including discussions of the impact of McClellan's replacement by Burnside, the continuing controversy over the planned formal issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation, the repercussions of recently conducted state and congressional elections, and the realities of army life in the field. And Rable delves deeply into the experiences of the wounded after the fighting ended and into how the battle was reported, both North and South. For the most part, there is little assessment regarding the performances of the generals on the battlefield; Rable's interests quite evidently focus more upon the lot of the common soldier. Despite the relative lack of emphasis on the tactical operations, the maps are entirely adequate to support the narrative.

Only a few months after Rable's book appeared, Frank Augustin O'Reilly published "The Fredericksburg Campaign". Inevitably, a comparison between the two must be made. O'Reilly has written a detailed military history, down to the regiment and battery level, laying out precisely the what, where, and when of combat operations. Fully 60 percent of his 500-plus page text is devoted to the action of December 13, 1862. This is not, however, a merely dry recounting of maneuver and sequence; O'Reilly takes care to maintain the vitality of his narrative by addressing the experiences and fates of individual officers and soldiers caught up in the fighting. All in all, however, O'Reilly's book is focused much more narrowly than Rable's, paying less heed to the general background of politics and the state of Northern and Southern morale at this stage of the war.

Of the two volumes, Rable's "Fredericksburg! Fredericksburg!" is probably the more accessible by the general reader not deeply into the study of American Civil War military operations, while O'Reilly's book is clearly the definitive traditional military history of the Fredericksburg battle in the traditional sense. Paired with Rable's work, the two together provide a uniquely comprehensive study of the campaign in all its multitude of aspects. I recommend reading both.

This book is an excellent novel on the Civil War. Being my major, and having read many accounts of the war, both fiction and non-fiction, I would rank this with some of the great fiction accounts of the war. It is not Red Badge of Courage, Shiloh, or the Killer Angels, which are considered the pinnacle of the genre, but it is a good read, encompassing a wider range of POVs than most of the other works. It takes elements from each of the works I have mentioned, and uses them to create a story in which it is easier to see how these people were.
Fredericksburg is often compared with Gods & Generals... I can only say that I believe that Fredericksburg would make the better movie, if kept faithful to the book (unlike G&G, which was bogged down by civilian drivel for a good portion of the movie). But, considering Hollywood and the lukewarm reception recieved by many Civil War movies, I would not want to see how this good piece of war fiction would be mutilated.

This is a well written work that tells the story of the Irish at Fredericksburg. This is a battle that is often overshadowed by the battle of Antietam in September 1862 and Gettysburg in July 1863. Despite this tendency to forget this battle it stands as a bloody testament to the courage of the Federal forces that were forced to charge into destruction.

The film Gods and Generals (released 2/21/2003) features a dramatic picture of the Irish sacrifice at this battle. Over 1200 men of the Irish Brigade went into battle and only 250 came back.

It is against this backdrop that author Kirk Mitchell sets his work. It is an excellent tale of the brave men of Eire that battled against each other 140 years ago. It is well written and is very much like the style of Michael Shaara in The Killer Angels. I suggest that anyone with an interest in the Civil War pick up a copy of this novel before it is not available anymore.

Mr. Mitchell has written a compelling and entertaining novel of the Irish units during the bitter battle of Fredericksburg in 1862. The characters were a nice collection of personalites, the unit information was well handled, the factual figures were done well, and the dialog between the fictional and factual characters were superb. But the central characters needed to be fleshed out a bit more. Some of them, I couldn't relate to or feel much compassion. But, the author captured the brutality of combat, the fear, the mud, the physical discomfort, the death and chaos of battle. Good details on the terrain, weather and history of the region. Having stood behind the stone wall at Marye's Heights recently, one can only imagine what the Union soldiers must have thought as they stormed repeatedly into a virtual hail of hostile ordinance.

This book is a landmark piece of thorough and conscientious research and writing.Author employs concise and succinct prose to present results of this research. Journalistic accounts of the key players in the area researched are particularly rewarding.Author's presentation of the biographical data detailing the life of George Washington's mother aremarkedly well written. Unbiased, yet thoroughly and appealingly presented. The material on Fielding Lewis might well be similar to reading a personal diary or well kept daily journal. Except that in the present case, avery assertive statement is carefully documented.Author's style in presenting annotations is extremely interesting and useful and makes for easy reading for such a valuable research tool and excellent biographical work as this book most certainly is. Author's style of annotations induces the reader into a prelminary but satisfying research program of his/her own before they realize that they are "hooked". Combination of style of annotation and style of prose cannot be surpassed in this instance.Technology in all fields is advancing at a marvelously progressive pace. So, as with any work, sources not now known may become available for research in the not too distant future. But for a state of the arts, conclusively nailed down, piece of research and writing on the Lewis and Washington families of Fredericksburg, the conscientious, reader/researcher/scholar need look no farther than this book.