I regret that you feel this way. However, I am a serious historian, and so, too, are many of my readers. The vast majority of them are serious students of the Civil War, and that’s the audience that I write to and for. I’m not about to sugar coat a serious review of a work that is sorely lacking in scholarly merit simply on the off-chance that someone’s newly-ignited passion for history might be killed by it. That would be an egregious breach of my responsibility as a historian and it would also not be doing my regular readers a service.

I said quite clearly that the book is probably okay for someone like you, who is only a casual student of history. If you like his work, then by all means, please read it and enjoy it.

In my 30’s I discovered Mr. Groom’s books and realized history is interesting when the focus is shifted on the thoughts of the people that lived it instead of the memories of the people that are forced to relive it.

With that being said, Winston Groom, for the first time in my life, made me interested in history, and this review of yours killed it.

Having read Groom’s “Shrouds of Glory,” I suspect the book is a synthesis of secondary sources retold in Groom’s words — hence no footnotes. Like you, this book is not on my reading list. But then again, I don’t think readers who already have Ballard, Winschel and Bearss on their shelves are Groom’s target audience. Rather, he is targeting the reader who loved Gump, saw the PBS Civil War series, has stopped at a Civil War battle or two out of curiosity, and/or is familiar with Groom’s popular history series. So long as the book is not an outright plagiarism (which I doubt it is), and a reasonably accurate account of the campaign (of which I am not so sure), I have no problem with it. Indeed, if the book reaches an audience that would not otherwise have any interest in learning about the campaign, and if even a fraction of those readers go on to join and contribute to organizations like the CWPT, I think we should be supporting it and similar works (although not necessarily buying them).

Chris

Jim