Mark Grimsley has received a commission from David Hackett Fischer (right) and James McPherson and it's causing him to wonder about the significance of 1864. (He's got a lot of good ACW stuff up, by the way.)Grimsley is well regarded in this blog, as you can tell.
However, the collaboration of Fischer and McPherson causes me to wonder if Fischer has relaxed his old professional standards and is prepared now to overlook incomplete historical rationalizations, reductive fallacies, the elimination of historic contradictions, not to mention causality compressed to the point of malfunction - which he once decried and any of which sins can be found in Battle Cry.
If Fischer (rightly) previously numbered David Donald among the ignoratii (his term!), what must he thinking of his new helpmate?
