We're getting to the point in new books where authors are writing my blog for me:Too many writers, unfortunately, treat both the civil and military sectors as relatively distinct and monolithic entities. They presume that the military and political spheres can be readily delineated ... (John M. Schofield and the Politics of Generalship)This is not just an excellent new biography, as Steve Woodworth blurbs it, it is a new model biography for Civil War historians. Its attention to the cloud of politics enshrouding every general of Schofield's rank is precedent setting.
Are you a victim of "the false belief that in matters of military policy and strategy that there are purely 'political' and purely 'military' decisions"? Then this book is for you.
Author Donald Connelly takes the working proposition at the center of Brooks Simpson's Let Us Have Peace - Grant's canny management of the politics surrounding his jobs - and distills that into a biographical paradigm.
This book goes far beyond Schofield, needless to say. Explore the politics of the ACW with this strong medicine.
