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The Destructive War: William Tecumseh Sherman, Stonewall Jackson, and the Americans
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 973.7
EAN: 9780679738787
ISBN: 0679738789
Label: Vintage
Manufacturer: Vintage
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 560
Publication Date: January 11, 1993
Publisher: Vintage
Release Date: January 11, 1993
Studio: Vintage
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Editorial Review:
From the moment the Civil War began, partisans on both sides were calling not just for victory but for extermination. And both sides found leaders who would oblige. In this vivid and fearfully persuasive book, Charles Royster looks at William Tecumseh Sherman and Stonewall Jackson, the men who came to embody the apocalyptic passions of North and South, and re-creates their characters, their strategies, and the feelings they inspired in their countrymen. At once an incisive dual biography, hypnotically engrossing military history, and a cautionary examination of the American penchant for patriotic bloodshed, The Destructive War is a work of enormous power.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Enigmatic Intellectual History
This book won the Bancroft Prize. I can see why. The prose is inspirational, every paragraph a little jewel. The book is absorbing. It was easy for me to get lost in the prose, too easy. But where was this book going, generally? How did the chapters tie together? How does the concept of the destructive war fit into the intellectual patterns of pre- and anti-bellum history? I can't answer these questions and I would hope that no one would ask me this last question on a Ph.D. prelim. I can ... Read More
Rating:  - Necessary Heresy
While focusing on the deeper causes of the civil war and their play-out on battlefields, Royster rips the lid off one of the most cherished American dogmas: the assumed sacrosanct value of the press. Royster's deep and thorough quotation from newspapers north and south, for decades preceding the war, lays bare a legacy of mutual hate encouraged by newspapers as they whipped their respective constituents up to a frenzy. The horror of "total war" and its major military proponents, in that context, ... Read More
Rating: - One of the greatest books I've ever read!
This is a brilliantly labyrinthine disquisition on the American Civil War. Royster's premise is the examination of the wars' scale of destruction, and the surprising extent of its violence, developed out of biographical sketches of Sherman and Jackson, who Royster believes best personify the Union and the Confederacy. Further, Royster sees the devastation of the Civil War as incipient in the antebellum period. The Destructive War is interpretive as well as critical, literary as well as historical, dealing ... Read More
Rating: - A Good Source of Civil War Information
The book The Destructive War by Charles Royster, examines the war policies and strategies of the Union and the Confederacy during the civil war. The book talks extensively about Confederate general Jackson and Union General Sherman.
At the beginning of the war the Union did not attack citizens or their property. The Union did not destroy any property of the citizens of the Confederacy because they anticipated winning the war. They realized that if they won the war it would be their responsibility ... Read More
Rating: - A new way to examine the destructive war
Royster's "The Destructive War" is one of the most important works of Civil War Scholarship in the 1990's. He blends a sweeping narrative with extensive analysis to explain the development of "total war" and its effects on Americans. What will really engage the reader is not so much Royster's examinations of General William Sherman's actions and those of his men, but rather the ideas of Stonewall Jackson and the calls for the destruction of Northern cities that they elicit from the Confederacy, ... Read More
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