A savage war : a military history of the Civil War / Williamson Murray and Wayne Wei-siang Hsieh.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Murray, Williamson, author.

Hsieh, Wayne Wei-siang, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

United States--History--Civil War, 1861-1865--Campaigns.

United States.

History.

Military campaigns.

Genre:

History.

Physical Description:

x, 602 pages : maps ; 25 cm

Place of Publication:

Princeton : Princeton University Press, [2016]

Summary:

The Civil War represented a momentous change in the character of war. It combined the projection of military might across a continent on a scale never before seen with an unprecedented mass mobilization of peoples. Yet despite the revolutionizing aspects of the Civil War, its leaders faced the same uncertainties and vagaries of chance that have vexed combatants since the days of Thucydides and the Peloponnesian War. A Savage War sheds critical new light on this defining chapter in military history. In a masterful narrative that propels readers from the first shots fired at Fort Sumter to the surrender of Robert E. Lee's army at Appomattox, Williamson Murray and Wayne Wei-siang Hsieh bring every aspect of the battlefield vividly to life. The show how this new way of waging war was made possible by the powerful historical forces unleashed by the Industrial Revolution and the French Revolution, yet how the war was far from being simply a story of the triumph of superior machines. Despite the Union's material superiority, a Union victory remained in doubt for most of the war. Murray and Hsieh paint indelible portraits of Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, William Tecumseh Sherman, and other major figures whose leadership, judgment, and personal character played such decisive roles in the fate of a nation. They also examine how the Army of the Potomac, the Army of Northern Virginia, and the other major armies developed entirely different cultures that influenced the war's outcome. A military history of breathtaking sweep and scope, A Savage War reveals how the Civil War ushered in the age of modern warfare. -- Inside jacket flap.

Contents:

The origins

The war's strategic framework

And the war came

First battles and the making of armies

Stillborn between Earth and water: the unfulfilled promise of joint operations

The Confederacy recovers, 1862

The Confederacy on the offensives, 1862

The war in the east, 1863

The war in the west, 1863

The killing time, the war in the east, 1864

Victory in the west, 1864

The collapse of the Confederacy

The Civil War in history.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780691169408

0691169403

OCLC:

940796121