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 Post subject: Civil War Fiction
PostPosted: Sat Jun 21, 2008 3:54 am 
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Posts: 134
Location: USA
Just finished "Gettysgurg" and started "Grant Comes East" by Newt Gingrich.Plan to get the last book of the series when finished with this one. I like the story line and the twist. It does a decent job of putting you there on the field of battle. What do the gentlemen of the club think of such reading and do you have suggestions along this line of reading fiction or non?

LTC. Charles Babb
COLD STEEL!
6th Brigade,3rd Division
XXIII Corps
Army of the Ohio


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PostPosted: Sat Jun 21, 2008 7:06 am 
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If you want to count wacky Civil War fiction, I always loved "The Guns of the South" by Harry Turtledove. What if a bunch of crazed time traveling South Africans gave Lee's army AK 47's?! Funny and Robert E Lee comes off as a real hero!

Capt Frando Roach
2BDE/4th Cav/I Corps/AoG


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PostPosted: Sat Jun 21, 2008 7:30 am 
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Liked Newt's books but the last one, Never Call Retreat, kind of strained credibility. You can't lose big, lose big, and then suddenly win big. But they were still fun books to read and had some very good battle descriptions.

Guns of the South was an interesting change too. I've read a couple of other alternate histories but it has been to long to review them.

LG. Kennon Whitehead
Chatham Grays
1/1/III AoM (CSA)


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PostPosted: Sat Jun 21, 2008 9:18 am 
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Bernard Cromwell, the same guy who wrote the Sharpe series, also wrote a two volume set using the American Civil War. Can't remember the names of the books but they were decent reads as I recall.

General Mark Nelms
6/3/IX/AoO
"Blackhawk Brigade"
Union Military Academy Instructor
Union Cabinet Secretary


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PostPosted: Sat Jun 21, 2008 11:45 am 
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<blockquote id="quote"><font size="3" face="book antiqua" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by nelmsm</i>
<br />Bernard Cromwell, the same guy who wrote the Sharpe series, also wrote a two volume set using the American Civil War. Can't remember the names of the books but they were decent reads as I recall.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">I've read those books by Bernard Cornwell and enjoyed them. Quite similar to the Napoleonic Sharpe books but quite refreshing because of the ACW setting. I think he only got around to writing 4 in the series (the last one leading up to Antietam).

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[url="http://homepage.ntlworld.com/a.r.barlow/acwgc/acw.htm"]General Antony Barlow[/url]
[url="http://homepage.ntlworld.com/a.r.barlow/acwgc/western_theater.htm"]Commander, Western Theater, Union Army[/url]


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PostPosted: Sat Jun 21, 2008 2:17 pm 
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<blockquote id="quote"><font size="3" face="book antiqua" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by Antony Barlow</i>
<br /><blockquote id="quote"><font size="3" face="book antiqua" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by nelmsm</i>
<br />Bernard Cromwell, the same guy who wrote the Sharpe series, also wrote a two volume set using the American Civil War. Can't remember the names of the books but they were decent reads as I recall.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">I've read those books by Bernard Cornwell and enjoyed them. Quite similar to the Napoleonic Sharpe books but quite refreshing because of the ACW setting. I think he only got around to writing 4 in the series (the last one leading up to Antietam).

Image
[url="http://homepage.ntlworld.com/a.r.barlow/acwgc/acw.htm"]General Antony Barlow[/url]
[url="http://homepage.ntlworld.com/a.r.barlow/acwgc/western_theater.htm"]Commander, Western Theater, Union Army[/url]
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

Was there that many? I was thinking there were only two. I may have to go back and search the library.

General Mark Nelms
6/3/IX/AoO
"Blackhawk Brigade"
Union Military Academy Instructor
Union Cabinet Secretary


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PostPosted: Sat Jun 21, 2008 2:28 pm 
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Nathaniel Starbuck Chronicles by Cornwell. Poyer writes a naval fiction series of the ACW.

Brig. Gen. Phil Driscoll
1st Brigade/1st Division/VCorps/AoP


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PostPosted: Sat Jun 21, 2008 2:53 pm 
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I had seen this series but was not sure of keeping my interest with it going so far out of the time period. I might have to check it out if I can get the book cheap[:D]


<blockquote id="quote"><font size="3" face="book antiqua" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by frando</i>
<br />If you want to count wacky Civil War fiction, I always loved "The Guns of the South" by Harry Turtledove. What if a bunch of crazed time traveling South Africans gave Lee's army AK 47's?! Funny and Robert E Lee comes off as a real hero!

Capt Frando Roach
2BDE/4th Cav/I Corps/AoG
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

LTC. Charles Babb
COLD STEEL!
6th Brigade,3rd Division
XXIII Corps
Army of the Ohio


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PostPosted: Sat Jun 21, 2008 3:53 pm 
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Hey Charles,

Try reading Killer Angels, very good book.

Respectfully,
Lt. Gen. Gery Bastiani
III Corp
AotM CSA



"If there is a shell or bullet over there destined for us, it will find us" - General James Longstreet


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PostPosted: Sat Jun 21, 2008 5:28 pm 
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There have been four entries to date in Bernard Cornwell's "Starbuck Chronicles" of the American Civil War: "Rebel," "Copperhead," "Battle Flag," and "The Bloody Ground." The last covers Antietam. Then abruptly, the entries in the series stopped. On his personal website, Cornwell writes:

"I suppose that the most frequently asked question I get is "when will the next Starbuck book be published?" and it's my fault that I get asked it so often. The problem began when the Sharpe TV series was made and it seemed sensible (no, it WAS sensible) to write more Sharpe books - so I took Sharpe back to India and began what is really a whole new Sharpe series. And the trouble was that the Sharpe books are just a bit too much like the Starbuck books and I did not want to be writing two of those a year, and so I sent Nathaniel Starbuck on an extended vacation. I fear he is still enjoying that. So will there be more Starbuck books? I hope so, but I don't really know when (watch this space).

Sincerely,
Brig Gen Dwight McBride
V Corps/AOP/USA


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PostPosted: Sat Jun 21, 2008 5:46 pm 
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Location: Oriskany, NY USA
Well, Killer Angels and Red Badge of Courage probably top my list. Other ones I have enjoyed were Gods and Generals and Last Full Measure by Jeff Shaara and also Shiloh by Shelby Foote.

Lt.General Dale Lastowicka
4th Brigade, 1st Division, VIII Corps, AOS


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PostPosted: Sat Jun 21, 2008 10:04 pm 
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<blockquote id="quote"><font size="3" face="book antiqua" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by dalelast</i>
<br />Well, Killer Angels and Red Badge of Courage probably top my list.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">I have those two books on my bookshelf and have read them over and over again and will probably do so again in the future. Highly recommended.

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[url="http://homepage.ntlworld.com/a.r.barlow/acwgc/acw.htm"]General Antony Barlow[/url]
[url="http://homepage.ntlworld.com/a.r.barlow/acwgc/western_theater.htm"]Commander, Western Theater, Union Army[/url]


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PostPosted: Sun Jun 22, 2008 9:24 am 
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A book I would highly reccommend is"Confederates" by a guy named"Thomas Keneally".strangely he is Australian.proof if any was ever needed how global the interest in the acw has become.i read a book called "1862" some time back.an alternate history book with British intervention,not as good as it sounds in my opinion and i would not be suggesting you rush out and get that one[:p]

1st Lt Stewart Crisp
3rd Bde
1st Div
XIV Corps
A.O.C


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PostPosted: Sun Jun 22, 2008 11:56 am 
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About forty years ago I read "The History of Rome Hanks", written in 1944. At the time I enjoyed it. Here is a review.

The big guns of U.S. newspaper book reviewing greeted Rome Hanks last fort night with the most thunderous salvo that has welcomed a first novel since Gone With The Wind. It was a "superb achieve ment" to the New York Times and "a beautiful and terrible book" to the Herald Tribune; a "powerful, intense and tre mendous story" to the Chicago Sun; "extraordinary, impressive, raw, vital, brutal and alive" to the San Francisco Chronicle.

Some reviewers entered reservations ("exhibitionist antics . . . abominable and irritating preciosity, a self-conscious pre tentiousness"). But the effect of their praise, plus lavish advertisements, was immediate. Rome Hanks sold out its first edition overnight.

Buyers content with simple violence and vice got their money's worth. But if Rome Hanks were sold with a money-back guarantee, its publishers might live to regret its boom. Overwritten, exaggerated, affected and confused, it is an incoherent patchwork of incidents stretching from Waterloo to Roosevelt II, centering in the Civil War and loosely sewn together by the narrative of a young man in search of his ancestors. (One of them is Grand father Romulus Hanks, late Captain of the 117th Iowa.) It is crowded with pas sages of adolescent naughtiness, self-conscious profanity and dreamy, implausible and interminable accounts of old Southern vices. Its battle scenes are compounded reports of decapitations, disembowelings, castrations. It is a novel of death without grief, fornication without intimacy (or even without much interest), violence without terror.

But in spite of its surface absurdities and wild overwriting, Rome Hanks is a noteworthy book. The qualities which distinguish it, and which led reviewers to praise its author's vitality, are 1) an acute disgust with the oversimplifications and idealizations of most historical fiction, 2) a pounding, repetitious style which, in 363 pages, develops considerable force, and 3) a genuine mastery of hillbilly dialogue. Readers who note how well Author Pennell pictures his plain soldiers, and how successful he is when he is not melodramatic, may wonder why he felt compelled to overload his book with lurid details, hope he will go easier next time.

The Author. Joseph Stanley Pennell was born in Junction City, Kansas, refuses to give his age "for Army reasons." He went to the University of Kansas, spent three years at Oxford, worked variously as newspaperman and radio announcer. He is now a second lieutenant in an antiaircraft battery stationed near San Francisco.



MG Mike Mihalik
1/III/AoMiss/CSA


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PostPosted: Wed Jun 25, 2008 2:10 pm 
Frando,
I also enjoyed "Guns Of The South", however, make no mistake, Robert E. Lee absolutely was a hero in real life, so that part was no stretch of the imagination.

BG Hank Smith
Army of Georgia
Smith's Corp Commanding


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