The Union War

Good book - I enjoyed his willingness to engage with the current historical trends. He specifically names historians he disagrees with and says why. This kind of clarity of thought is really engaging. I think he makes a very good “rebound” case that we have swung the pendulum too far away from embracing the idea of Union as a core motivation for the North's willingness to fight in the Civil War.

One key item felt very unsatisfying - he spoke early on of the inability to produce a coherent thread of opinion through the voluminous soldier correspondence, yet he attempts exactly that for the second half of the book. It would have been useful for him to give more explanation why his analysis of excerpts from soldiers letters was better than those he criticized earlier.

Still a short, useful, and interesting book