Bloody Roads South

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Ulysses Grant's relentless hammering tactics prevented Robert E. Lee from regaining the strategic initiative in 1864, although the Southern general's defensive operations during May-June of that year are regarded by many as his greatest military accomplishment. It was during this campaign that Grant came to be called ``The Butcher'' because of the horrendous casualties he was willing to accept as he ordered assault after assault. He did not retreat after suffering tactical defeats in the battles of the Wilderness, Spotsylvania Courthouse and Cold Harbor, but continued to push his troops ever closer to the rebel capital of Richmond. Not a formal campaign study, this is a dramatic account told through the eyes of soldiers, civilians and government leaders. One of the elements historian Trudeau dramatizes is the shifting emotional reaction of President Lincoln as he worried whether Grant would prove as faint-hearted as other generals who had faced Lee in the field. When word was brought from Grant that ``There is no turning back,'' the president literally kissed the messenger, for this was probably the most important of several historic turning-points in the four-year Civil War. Illustrations. (Oct.)

Library Journal

This popularly written account of the initial months of Grant's decisive Virginia campaign against Lee will find a ready audience among Civil War buffs. Done in the episodic, you-are-there style of such writers as Cornelius Ryan, it rests mainly on a host of published first-hand accounts and regimental histories. By 1864 the war in the East had become a test of wills and endurance. How the ordinary soldiers and civilians measured up to that test through 40 days of horrific carnage is the book's main focus. Although devoid of sweeping conclusions and with few notes, the book's presentation of the campaign's strategy and the tactics of individual battles is clear. Excellent for the general reader and libraries of any size.-- Thomas E. Schott, Office of History, Engineering Installation Div., Tinker Air Force Base, Okla.