3/14/2005

Margaret Leech, good enough for modern readers?

When a book like Freedom Rising: Washington in the Civil War appears, you immediately wonder what the author, Ernest B. Fergurson, has against Margaret Leech and her Pulitzer-winning Reveille in Washington: 1860-1865.

At least one reviewer picked up on the issue - really, anyone who has delighted in Leech's book would - and he concludes that "I disagree with Fergurson that his book really adds to the historiography. But I do believe that his more modern telling of the story would be more accessible to the general reader."

Odd call. It's hard to imagine a more accessible book than Reveille.