Synopses & Reviews
Review
"In this first novel a student of violence in American culture employs fact and fiction, 'official messages,' and reconstructed thought and dialogue, to tell the story of the 1864 battle for Petersburg. Whether because Slotkin's fictive powers are limited or because he missed military service (Clausewitz said that one could never imagine combat, could scarcely know it firsthand), his characters tend to woodenness, their language forced and motion creaky. When it comes to friction among 19th-century Americans, however, he turns every 'realistic' corner. Like an urban social worker sent to the trenches of Blue and Gray in a time machine, Slotkin charts strains between (and among) officers and men, blacks and whites, slave-holders and plain folk, Jews and Gentiles, veterans and recruits, coal miners and military engineers, and the Irish and everybody else. While Slotkin is no Hemingway, he may have here the social history text of the future." Reviewed by Daniel Weiss, Virginia Quarterly Review (Copyright 2006 Virginia Quarterly Review)