by E.L. Doctorow, 2006

This book disppointed me a great deal.  I looked forward to reading a good historical novel on the Civil War and the subject of Sherman’s march to the sea interested me a great deal.  The characters in the book, however, were not very interesting and seemed to be more like stick characters than real people.  Doctorow did not do a very good job of describing the battles and, after a while, they all began to run together.  There also doesn’t seem to be a very good sense of time so all the action becomes very muddled and confusing.

Doctorow also includes several passages which consist of Sherman’s inner thoughts.  I always seem to have a problem when an author presumes to know a famous person’s innermost thoughts, particularly in the setting of an historical novel.  I beleive that the actions and words (letters, etc.) seem to do a much better job in this setting of capturing the essence of a famous personage.

There are much better historical novels written using the Civil War as a setting, and even actual non-fiction history books seem to be a better read than this.  I would not particualry recommend this book as either enjoyable reading or for its historical content.