Lincoln’s Lieutenants – Stephen W. Sears, 2017 ★★★★

Epic Battles Led by Petty Minds

They were eventual victors in the highest-stakes battles their country ever fought, enduring gut-wrenching reversals and hellish casualties all the way. They were also whiny, bratty, narcissistic headcases easily triggered into launching dramas behind the front.

With such leaders was the Union saved.

The main takeaway from this book, the first by Civil War historian Stephen Sears to cover the entire war rather than a specific campaign, is just how brutal a spectacle it was not just during specific battles but all the way through. Yet the prima donna aspect hits home, too.

The Burning Mountain – Alfred Coppel, 1982 ★★

The Longest Day that Never Was

For those who balk at the morality of using A-bombs on Japan at the end of World War II, The Burning Mountain presents a hellish alternative: mass waves of suicide boats and planes, gas warfare, hordes of crying children wearing explosives, and much more.

Between 150,000 to 250,000 people died at Hiroshima and Nagasaki; Alfred Coppel imagined a death toll at least as high in the hypothetical event of a failed detonation. The invasion of the Japanese Home Islands becomes a series of endless battles fought with bamboo sticks and flamethrowers; one side full of people eager to die, the other side worn out both by their own casualties and those they must inflict.

As a worst-case scenario, The Burning Mountain convinces. As a story, it mostly misses the mark with a handful of distinctive yet dull characters and an uninvolving, shapeless narrative.

Gettysburg – Stephen W. Sears, 2003 ★★★★½

Teaching Lee Humility

It began a brazen demonstration of contempt and wound up a history-altering mistake. In between, over three days, came intense carnage. Still, who won Gettysburg was not decided immediately; much of the how and why parts of the battle are still being debated.

Today we see Gettysburg as the turning point in the bloodiest of American wars. Back then, concrete conclusions were harder to reach. Stephen W. Sears offers readers something the people who fought at Gettysburg didn’t have: clarity.

For the Confederates, what was at stake was clear enough. They needed to stay on the attack and put the fight to the North. The commander of their Army of Northern Virginia, Robert E. Lee, explained: “There is always hazard in military movements, but we must decide between the positive loss of inactivity and the risk of action.”

Controversies & Commanders: Dispatches From The Army Of The Potomac – Stephen W. Sears, 1999 ★★

War is Hell on Generals, Too

Throughout the first half of the Civil War, the U. S. Army on the field performed like beer-league backups against a team of All-Stars. It is natural a series of essays about its leadership would present a dispiriting chronicle of utter ineptitude. Mostly it does.

Stephen W. Sears, who has written about those early years of the Army of the Potomac across several campaign-specific books, takes stock of Northern leadership performance during the war as a whole. He would seem the right author; yet for all his expertise Controversies & Commanders is not as satisfying as his other works.

It may just be that much of this book is ground he covered before, in chapters of other books. Or the brevity of his essays, or the lack of their originality as he mostly plumbs secondary sources and offers non-controversial conclusions.

Company Commander – Charles B. MacDonald, 1947 ★★★½

Bullets and Boredom on the Western Front

The day-to-day experience of leading an American infantry company into the heart of Germany and beyond is given real feeling as well as facts in this first-person World War II memoir. What it lacks in taut adventure it makes up for in authenticity.

Charles B. MacDonald testifies to the grim nature of war in many forms, including a night retreat under bombardment and advancing into enemy flak positions. Boredom and terror were frequent companions; so too was death.

The time we spend with MacDonald and his company are in places that don’t get much attention in histories of the war. But calling it rear-echelon duty isn’t right, either. They had more than enough to do.

The Divine Wind – Rikihei Inoguchi & Tadashi Nakajima with Roger Pineau, 1958 ★★

Survival Was Not an Option

Call it bushido, call it warrior spirit, call it wanton military terrorism, there is something about the idea of young men willingly flying their planes into enemy ships that is hard to process, even more than 80 years after it was part of daily life in World War II.

To read the story the way it is told by two principal architects of Imperial Japan’s kamikaze program, the problem wasn’t finding volunteers for these suicide missions. The problem was saying no to those who had to wait for another opportunity.

Believable? Not entirely, to be sure. But two things about Japan in 1944 helped make the kamikaze idea reality. One: Their people were steeped in a tradition of honor centered around self-sacrifice. Two: They had already all but lost the war by any conventional metric.

The Johnstown Flood – David McCullough, 1968 ★★★½

The Price of Fish 

When the dam holding storm-swollen Lake Conemaugh collapsed on May 31, 1889, David McCullough writes how the result was like unleashing Niagara Falls upon the urban sprawl of Johnstown, Pennsylvania. Over 2,200 people perished that day.

The survivors’ anguish turned to anger when the full reason for the unprecedented disaster was revealed. The water held by the lake wasn’t supposed to be there. It was an artificial lake, a playground of privilege for Midwestern tycoons to enjoy their summers.

It was like the Titanic disaster a generation later, but in reverse; the water landing on people instead of people landing in water. Still, there was an anti-capitalist angle in both stories.

Washington’s Crossing – David Hackett Fischer, 2004 ★★★★★

America Rolls the Dice

History books that revel in detail can be turn-offs for casual readers. But not always. Washington’s Crossing transforms footnotes into adventures and academic disagreements into entertaining theater. People say history is fun, but they are rarely proven as right as here.

In the early days of the American Revolution, the war could have gone in any direction. David Hackett Fischer details the travails of the Continental Army in 1776, from its defeat on Long Island to its rebirth in New Jersey as it launches a risky attack across the Delaware River.

Today we may think of 1776 as Year Zero of a grand adventure, a rosy dawn of hope and common purpose, whatever came after. But Fischer points out the contemporary outlook was very glum:

Stilwell And The American Experience In China 1911-1945 – Barbara Tuchman, 1971 ★★½

Anatomy of a Misadventure

A book about historic failure needs a deft hand to keep from being more than a drag for a reader, especially when the topic is the Allied effort in World War II. During the march to final victory, who wants to dwell on an endless spiral of ignominy going on in China?

Stilwell And The American Experience In China is not easy to ignore. It was a history of great occasion when it came out, a Pulitzer Prize-winning examination of American policy in the Far East. This came out at a time when young men were being shipped home from Vietnam in body bags by the hundreds every month.

That the book would be seen as all-too-relevant to the politics of the 1970s was not something author Barbara Tuchman avoids. She makes her feelings clear enough in the book’s Foreword:

The First Salute – Barbara Tuchman, 1988 ★★½

Helping America Happen

Creating the United States was the work of more than one nation. What commercial and strategic concerns went into its birth? And what really cost the British crown their 13 colonies?

Barbara Tuchman takes a long view in appreciating the forces at play in the struggle, for example spotlighting the Netherlands’ bloody overthrow of Catholic rule in the 1500s. Subtitled “A View of the American Revolution,” the book explains how French and Dutch support, along with British ineptitude, helped realize the United States.

If you can tolerate the hopping-around approach to developing a thesis and multiple detours into 20^th century politics, you may enjoy this colorful, fast-moving-once-it-gets-going account.

America In Search Of Itself – Theodore H. White, 1982 ★★½

Once More Unto the Breach with Teddy White

Before Ronald Reagan’s election as president in 1980, American politics had fallen into a rut. Elections had been between two clear known quantities who generally agreed on the state of the world and what the United States needed to do. Differences centered on process, not goals.

Reagan was different. While fellow Republicans saw some use for government, his view was far more negative. After decades of expanding federal reach, Reagan wanted not only to cut taxes but slash the bureaucracy that made Big Government big.

For many liberals, the arrival of Reagan in 1980 came like a slow-motion nightmare. With an incumbent president seemingly powerless under the grip of inflation and an embassy full of American hostages in Iran, Reagan’s ascendency had the makings of an existential crisis.

Breach Of Faith – Theodore H. White, 1975 ★½

From a History to a Screed

It begins at the conclusion, a few dry words from Warren Burger, the Chief Justice of the U. S. Supreme Court that ended a stalemate: “The generalized assertion of privilege must yield to the demonstrated specific need for the evidence in a pending criminal trial.”

With that, the curtain rang down on what had been one of the most consequential and popular presidencies in American history. What began as a counter to New Frontier adventurism and Great Society excess ended with genuine horror as well as displays of shocked virtue that would have embarrassed Captain Renault. Like this book.

In spinning his story, Theodore H. White often leaves key details unexplained, apparently figuring readers are also in the know and just want this recent tumult explained. He is not writing a history but a sermon, complete with hellbent evildoers and brave angels.

Paul Revere’s Ride – David Hackett Fischer, 1994 ★★★½

Some Kind of Hero

Who is this Paul Revere guy and what do we really need to know about him? Is he just a one-hit wonder in American history who transformed an abbreviated horse ride into a ticket to immortality? Or was he actually great?

David Hackett Fischer’s short answer: Yes, he was. The longer answer is this nearly 400-page dive examining his life, world, and central role in helping set the stage for the American Revolution.

Fischer is successful in the main drawing attention to Revere’s personal courage and deeper contributions to his cause, but like with his other histories, the book really shines at taking a broader view. A lot more planning went into April 19, 1775 than how many lanterns to put in a steeple.

The Making Of The President 1972 – Theodore H. White, 1973 ★★★½

Nobody Loves a Winner

The problem with total victory is that victors often have a hard time overcoming them. It offers no moral guardrails, no ego checks to counter bad impulses, while falsely beguiling the victor into seeing only a clear road and an open horizon ahead.

All this was a problem for President Richard Nixon’s 1972 re-election campaign long before the votes came in. The fourth and final volume in Theodore H. White’s “Making Of The President” series examines what happens when four years of success becomes its own poison pill.

In so doing, White turns in an engaging book even while it struggles to get a handle on the elephant in the room: the arrests of men connected to the Nixon re-election campaign who had broken into Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate hotel.

The Making Of The President 1968 – Theodore H. White, 1969 ★★★★

There's a Riot Going On

That saying back in 1968, “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows,” clearly didn’t apply where Theodore H. White was concerned. When it came to that year’s presidential election, he handed you the whole meteorological report.

White’s “Making Of The President” series was three books into its four-book run when this 1968 edition came out, at over 500 pages by far the fattest and most sprawling of them all. He goes on too long in several places, data maven that he was, but when he’s done filling you in on the election’s many twists and turns, you get a strong sense of living through one chaotic year, and of why it turned out the way it did.

Did the country really go through a period of dramatic leftist radicalization and come out of it electing Richard Nixon? Yes, and the two things were closely related. White, a genteel liberal himself, makes clear a candidate touting law and order had considerable appeal when cities were ablaze with riot and campuses under student siege.

The Making Of The President 1964 – Theodore H. White, 1965 ★★★

Over Before It Began

Theodore H. White lost more than a president and friend in 1963. He also lost a chance to follow up his Pulitzer Prize-winning account of the 1960 U. S. Presidential election with something nearly as riveting.

It wasn’t a race in 1964 but a coronation. The question wasn’t if Lyndon Johnson would be re-elected president, but by how wide a margin. Johnson’s campaign themes of peace and prosperity resonated with voters. After the shocking assassination of John F. Kennedy, Americans were not ready to have a third president in just over a year.

Meanwhile, Republican challenger Barry Goldwater was barely trying to win over the undecideds. He delivered instead a bold libertarian message in a tone White likens to an Old Testament prophet, adopting a slogan that seemed unconvinced by itself: “In your heart you know he’s right.”

The Making Of The President 1960 – Theodore H. White, 1961 ★★★★

Tarnished, But Still A Classic

Can a book’s credibility be hobbled by privileged access to its primary subject? Can that same access, used to its fullest degree, redeem the book’s faults and render it an enduring classic?

Yes, and yes. Here’s the proof.

Covering the 1960 Presidential election, Theodore White interviewed John F. Kennedy, flew with Kennedy, ate with Kennedy, gossiped with Kennedy. He did everything but sleep with Kennedy, though he does wind up in bed with the guy here, figuratively speaking.

It was for a good cause. This book remains not only a vital record of one of the country’s most charismatic politicians but a deep dive into how a presidency could be won. Even White later admitted he got carried away, but his invested narrative and sense of purpose pull you in.

One Of Us: Richard Nixon And The American Dream – Tom Wicker, 1991 ★★★

Tricky Dick and His Critics

Presidents are not well-balanced people. They go out of their way risking derision, abuse, even murder to affect miniscule changes in how things are; at best making compromises, at worst committing crimes. Such an impulse must be questioned; either they are corrupt or insane.

Few presidents wore that derangement so openly as Richard Nixon, a childhood misfit who ran for national office five times and looked more miserable and awkward each time at it. In a business that demands compulsive socializing, he was a proud loner who cultivated many strategic allies but very few friends.

Yet he made himself the most consequential president of the second half of the 20^th century, an era which gave us several.

A Stillness At Appomattox – Bruce Catton, 1953 ★★★½

A Somber Last Waltz

The third and final volume of Bruce Catton’s “Army Of The Potomac” series winds up the story of Abraham Lincoln’s greatest fighting force as it struggled to its ultimate victory. Like nearly all such grand culminations, it can’t help but be at least a little disappointing.

Part of that is due to the natural deflation of finding oneself at the end of a long journey, wondering if all the toil and pain was worth it. Part of it is because the last year of the American Civil War, at least in Northern Virginia, was as dull as it was deadly, mired in an early form of trench warfare which put an end to dashing assaults and quick successes.

The author is also at fault. Catton, for all his factual command, his poetic turns of phrase, and his masterful word portraits, comes across somewhat more the way critics have painted him, moralizing and windy. The book is still good, very good in places, but a modest comedown from the fantastic first two volumes.

Before The Fall – William Safire, 1975 ★★★★

Run of the Milhous

From 1966 to 1973, William Safire was one of Richard Nixon’s top speechwriters. In Before The Fall, Safire makes use of his vantage point as crafter of the Nixon message to relate everything he saw, and much of what he didn’t, of Nixon’s triumphant, calamitous presidency.

Among the things he missed was the Watergate break-in which forced Nixon’s resignation. As that was dark ops and Safire was in the business of public relations, his orbit lay well outside the infamous Plumbers breaking into Democratic headquarters.

Yet this didn’t protect Safire from being bugged when Attorney General John Mitchell pegged him as a potential security leak.