Must reading

Drew has comments on Beatie's Army of the Potomac Volume III that cannot be improved upon. As Drew notes, the editing in this volume is much better than in the first two (Da Capo apparently banked a publisher's normal editing expenses). This means fewer distractions and annoyances.

I blurbed the jacket. Drew should have blurbed it instead. My squib:

One must read Beatie's Army of the Potomac series to understand the war in the Eastern Theatre. Built on a trove of unknown and neglected sources, his decades of research have produced an electrifying retelling of the Civil War marked by fairness to facts. Beatie makes his audiences feel intimate with events - not superior to them - and the gems of his original research are scattered like treats for the experienced reader. Thrilling, delightful,profound, each new volume in this series is a major event in Civil War publishing. After 40 years of reading Civil War nonfiction, I rate this the one title or series that is indispensible.

If I could again emphasize the scale and scope of this work, let me do so: your average retelling of the war, however long the book, is an HO train set. You look down at the little toy figures and equipment like a giant. In this book, you walk among life-sized figures and struggle with them to reach correct decisions.

A book like this takes time and a setting aside of "what everyone knows" but the payoff here is what the enjoyment of history is all about.