by Richard Subber | Sep 28, 2022 | American history, Book reviews, Books, Democracy, History
…they just walked away…
Book review:
Ends of War:
The Unfinished Fight of Lee’s Army
after Appomattox
by Caroline E. Janney
Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 2021
331 pp.
I thought I know a lot about the American Civil War. Janney’s book, Ends of War, is a good reminder that there’s lots more to learn.
Lee surrendered his army to Grant on April 9, 1865. Of course it’s pretty well known that other Confederate Army units were still fighting for several months after that event.
Janney confirms this stark point: for tens of thousands of Confederate soldiers, the war didn’t end then. They just stopped actively fighting the Union forces.
Close to half of Lee’s men never actually surrendered at Appomattox, and this unappreciated reality was part of the foundation of the dangerous Southern mythology of the “Lost Cause.”
Lee had a bit less than 50,000 men under his command when he signed the surrender document in Wilmer McLean’s house. Less than 30,000 of Lee’s men were officially but very haphazardly “paroled” in the days following the surrender.
At least 20,000 men in dirty gray uniforms walked or rode away from Appomattox without officially surrendering, most of them hoping to head for home. Many of them remained devoted to “the cause.”
It seems that Grant and Lincoln and the Union forces desperately wanted to end the fighting, but there was no real Northern plan to deal with the peace that was the presumptive goal, and to end the Southern insurrection, and to realistically bring the people of the rebel states back into the Union.
For my taste, the book is too long. Janney could have established her argument, made her case, and proved her point in fewer pages.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2022 All rights reserved.
Book review: The Cradle Place
by Thomas Lux
poems wrapped in a wet rag…
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My first name was rain: A dreamery of poems with 53 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
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by Richard Subber | Sep 26, 2022 | History, Human Nature, Power and inequality, World history
the doleful tally…
“In the last 3,421 years
of recorded history
only 268 have seen no war.”
from The Lessons of History (1968) by Will and Ariel Durant, p. 81.
Sadly, an update changes only one of the numbers in the Durants’ doleful tally: we now have 3,477 years of recorded history.
It’s obvious that humankind can’t figure out how to study war no more.
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Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2022 All rights reserved.
Book review: The Comanche Empire
the other story of the American West…
–
Writing Rainbows: Poems for Grown-Ups with 59 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
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by Richard Subber | Sep 23, 2022 | Book reviews, Books, History, Politics, World history
the blood of countless victims…
Book review:
Setting the East Ablaze:
Lenin’s Dream of an Empire in Asia
by Peter Hopkirk
New York: Kodansha International, Ltd., 1984, 1995)
252 pp
Setting the East Ablaze is a great complement to Hopkirk’s more historic treatment of the perennial Asian conflicts, The Great Game.
One wonders whether there is any region of the world that couldn’t be the setting for this kind of relentlessly detailed treatment of the self-serving and violent vagaries of human conceit and avarice that have ploughed the earth and turned under the blood of countless victims.
You can learn a lot in reading this book, but you might not be surprised.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2022 All rights reserved.
Book review:
Harriet Beecher Stowe: A Spiritual Life
A thought leader in the 19th century…
by Nancy Koester
–
As with another eye: Poems of exactitude with 55 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
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by Richard Subber | Sep 19, 2022 | Book reviews, Books, History, Human Nature, Politics, Power and inequality, World history
swords, but no ploughshares…
Book review:
The Great Game:
The Struggle for Empire in Central Asia
by Peter Hopkirk
New York: Kodansha International, Ltd., 1992
564 pp
This was almost entirely new history to me. I guess I’m a typical Westerner—I don’t know much about Asia.
It’s not enough that the indigenous peoples of Asia have been squabbling and fighting with each other for centuries. The British and other Europeans and the Russians decided to get involved in the “Great Game” of trying to control and expropriate the riches of the East.
The Great Game tells it all.
It hasn’t turned out well at all.
Endless warfare is not the way to go about it. It don’t work.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2022 All rights reserved.
Book review:
The American Revolution: A History
The “Founders” were afraid of “democracy”…
by Gordon S. Wood
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In other words: Poems for your eyes and ears with 64 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
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by Richard Subber | Sep 9, 2022 | Book reviews, Books, Reflections
let’s talk about relevance…
Book review:
The Fabric of Reality:
The Science of Parallel Universes—
and its Implications
by David Deutsch
New York: Penguin Books, 1997
The Fabric of Reality is intriguing, but it’s also hard work.
I think I “understand,” to use Deutsch’s word, that he likes to talk about the Big Bang and the so-called Theory of Everything.
Personally, I find it interesting to know something about his “four main strands,” namely, quantum physics, epistemology, the theory of computation, and evolution.
Nevertheless, I embrace a willingness to suspect that the esoterica of physics and a philosophy of physics are essentially irrelevant to the lives that nearly all of us lead.
You can read the whole book if you want to.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2022 All rights reserved.
Book review: The Bridges of Madison County
If you’re looking for
highly stoked eroticism
and high-rolling lives
that throw off sparks when they touch,
look elsewhere.
by Robert Waller
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In other words: Poems for your eyes and ears with 64 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
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