Book Description
Gordon Rhea's gripping fourth volume on the spring 1864 campaignwhich pitted Ulysses S. Grant against Robert E. Lee for the first time in the Civil Warvividly recreates the battles and maneuvers from the stalemate on the North Anna River through the Cold Harbor offensive. Cold Harbor: Grant and Lee, May 26June 3, 1864 showcases Rhea's tenacious research which elicits stunning new facts from the records of a phase oddly ignored or mythologized by historians. In clear and profuse tactical detail, Rhea tracks the remarkable events of those nine days, giving a surprising new interpretation of the famous battle that left seven thousand Union casualties and only fifteen hundred Confederate dead or wounded. Here, Grant is not a callous butcher, and Lee does not wage a perfect fight. Within the pages of Cold Harbor, Rhea separates fact from fiction in a charged, evocative narrative. He leaves readers under a moonless sky, with Grant pondering the eastward course of the James River fifteen miles south of the encamped armies. AUTHOR BIO: Gordon C. Rhea is the author of The Battle of the Wilderness, May 56, 1864; The Battles for Spotsylvania Court House and the Road to Yellow Tavern, May 712, 1864; and To the North Anna River: Grant and Lee, May 1325, 1864, winner of the Fletcher Pratt Literary Award, among other books. He lives in St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands, and in Mt. Pleasant, South Carolina, with his wife and two sons.
Customer Reviews:
The Overland campaign Series.......2006-07-22
The Battle of the Wilderness May 5-6, 1864
Product Details
* Hardcover: 520 pages
* Publisher: Louisiana State University Press (July 1994)
* Language: English
* ISBN: 0807118737
The Battles for Spotsylvania Court House and the Road to Yellow Tavern May 7-12, 1864
Product Details
* Hardcover: 483 pages
* Publisher: Louisiana State University Press (May 1997)
* Language: English
* ISBN: 0807121363
To the North Anna River: Grant and Lee, May 13-25, 1864
Product Details
* Hardcover: 505 pages
* Publisher: Louisiana State University Press (May 2000)
* Language: English
* ISBN: 0807125350
Cold Harbor: Grant and Lee, May 26-June 3, 1864
Product Details
* Hardcover: 552 pages
* Publisher: Louisiana State University Press (September 2002)
* Language: English
* ISBN: 0807128031
I am reviewing the four books a single series although each book is a full stand-alone history. This is a highly detailed military history of Grant's Overland Campaign of 1864. Two of the best generals commanding two of the best armies, in American history, decide the Civil war in the East. Gordon Rhea gives this month the detailed attention it requires and had never received. The 2,000 pages allows for the full story of the campaign, the personalities, failures and success.
The first book covers the major battle of The Wilderness an area Grant wished to clear and Lee hoped to trap him in as he had Hooker in 1863. Through a series of Union miscalculations and command problems, Lee manages to get in Grant's way. What follows is a confused bloody two-day battle that has been termed "Bush whacking on a grand scale". An excellent series of maps, help the reader stay abreast of the battle and understand the confusion of both sides. Lee loses Longstreet and starts to make the hard decisions about personnel that he has avoided since 1862. Grant while testing his relationship with Meade and Burnside, is trying to learn the AOP's generals too. This process dominates the four books as repeatedly Grant is forced to deal with the problems this creates and Lee takes steps that were unthinkable in 1863.
The second book moves the battle from The Wilderness south to Spotsylvania and Yellow Tavern. Grant refuses to "play the game" and retreat behind the Rappahannock but pushes past Lee and continues south. What follows is a race from defensive point to defensive point, which the AOP concedes to the AoNV. Union commanders hesitate at critical moments while the AoNV reinforces the objective. This allows Lee to stay up or ahead producing one of the bloodiest battles in our history at Spotsylvania. In addition, this book covers the critical cavalry operations, Grant's reasoning, and the price paid in taking Sheridan away from Meade. J.E.B. Stuart's death, is well covered. Both in terms of what it means to the AoNV, to Lee and to the Confederacy.
After one of the hardest weeks in their history, the two exhausted bloodied armies eye each other over their entrenchments. Lee understands that he is being trapped and that defensive war can only end in defeat. Grant is trying not to be stuck in a siege and determined to continue south. What follows is a series of forced marches and small battles as Grant and Lee test each other. Each general wins and loses daily as the armies march, counter march and fight. However, at the end of each day, Grant is always closer to Richmond. Lee produces a brilliant trap, Grant takes the bait but circumstances keep lee from springing it. Almost to late, Grant sees the trap pulls back, changes direction and continues south. Book 3, To the North Anna River covers this brilliant and exciting time in detail. Rhea produces some excellent analysis of both commanders and the developing personnel problems they are facing. Neither man is having an easy time of it and both understand they have never faced an enemy like this.
The last book takes us to Cold Harbor, one of the most controversial battles of the war. The detail history and excellent analysis leads us through this battle and produces some startling conclusions. As always, the author provides full support and justification for them. This might be the most important book of the series and the definitive book on the battle of Cold Harbor.
Each book has a full set of maps and illustrations. The writing is uniform and very readable. While detailed, the actions are understandable and you are seldom lost in a sea of names and/or unit numbers. Each book is a stand-alone history and is readable as such. The books were published from 1994 to 2002 and had to be written that way. This is the best account of the Overland Campaign available. It is both an invaluable reference and a great reading experience.
Disappointing and unfulfilling.......2006-07-12
It is not surprising that Gordon Rhea has sold many books through his four volume overview of the Overland Campaign in 1864. After all, the practicing attorney writes well, captivates his audience, and stirs up controversy in the academic community. But after completing three of the four books, it appears that Rhea's personal vendetta against George Gordon Meade and love affair of Ulysses S. Grant has taken over as one of the central themes of this study.
Granted, Rhea's scholarship of debunking American folklore surrounding the battle bears appreciation. Grant as the butcher and Lee as the talented commander are too fabricated into popular memory. Rather, Rhea carefully depicts Grant as the strategist who attempted to "employ combinations of maneuver and force to bring a difficult adversary to bay." (xii) Recently, scholarship is aggressively rethinking memory and its affect on the public. Much of what has become popularized in the Civil War apparently has a different side. Gordon Rhea is one of those trying to reshape the myths and legends that many Civil War buffs grew up with. However, his success comes with failure.
What transpires in the text is Rhea essentially letting Grant off the hook as the so-called "butcher" of the Union, which is appropriate, but not that well-done by the author. Simply stating that the reported thousands killed on June 3 "has no basis in reality" is too easy for a Grant sympathizer. Perhaps the casualty reports for Cold Harbor do not match the figures we know today. But Rhea has apparently made it his mission to deliver Grant as the American hero of the Civil War. No more is this apparent than his continued attack on George Meade, the "commander" of the Army of Potomac. What Rhea fails to understand is the concept of emotion and its attachment in this sense to manhood. Meade was shattered mentally when his army merely was passed over to Grant. Meade's reputation suffered but he continued to be a soldier. Perhaps the relationship of Grant and Meade was rocky. How could it not be? True, Meade had his shortcomings and his handling of the army on June 3 was less than stellar. But Rhea's attempt to inflate the image of Grant by destroying the figure of Meade is one of failure and disappointment.
Gordon Rheas' Virginia journey continues........2005-10-02
As with the preceding volumes, this one is filled with the factual detail and the narrative excitement, the reader has come to expect from a Gordon Rhea book. His skillful hand has brought Grant's Virginia campaign to life with a great depth of detail.
The battles leading up to the larger confrontation at Cold Harbor are fascinating. I found much new material that I had not been exposed to before regarding Haw's Shop, Bethedsda Church, and Matadequin Creek. All too often we forget how difficult it was for Grant or Lee to aquire accurate and useful information regarding the disposition of their foe. This seems particularly true of the Cold Harbor campaign. In many ways I found the lead-up to Cold Harbor to be somewhat similar to the lead-up to Antietam. Of course, this time, Lee's Army of Northern Virginia had learned the craft of entrenching.
As other reviewers have indicated, there is a wealth of information concerning the leadership difficulties that Grant faced and in particular his relationship with Meade. As a reader, I certainly came away feeling that Meade perhaps deserved a significant amount of the blame for the latter parts of the Union failure at Cold Harbor. Certainly, as the letters to his wife confirm, Meade's focus was on himself and not on his men or his foe.
Lastly, I think many readers will find themselves questioning the time-worn idea that Grant simply sent his army to be butchered at Cold Harbor. Instead, I found that Grant's thought process may not have been so far out of whack. Grant did what McClellan failed to do at Antietam. He pushed the issue as far as he could. Unfortunately, for his men, it wasn't a day 2 at Antietam...but instead was a Cold Harbor indeed.
Excellent Narrative of Grant vs. Lee After North Anna.......2005-09-23
In my humble opinion, Rhea has written an excellent summary Grant vs. Lee after the North Anna Campaign and just before the events leading up to the siege for Petersburg. Indeed, I believe he is one of the best historic writers around today.
As an admitted layperson who may not have the expertise of other reviewers, I mainly look for a book with an easy-to-follow summary, containing many well-detailed maps, objective viewpoints of Northern and Southern leaders, and utilizes anecdotes from several participants.
Rhea's book pretty much fits the bill as he praises and criticizes both Grant and Lee (both missed golden opportunities to achieve a decisive victory), describes in exacting detail manuevers and engagements, and contains well-made maps. My major complaint is that since Rhea goes into so much detail in troop movements and battles, the book could have easily contained more than the 30 or so maps in the book. Such exacting detail in troop movements can easily lose the reader.
Complaint aside, I highly recommend the book as the definitive title of the actions leading up to and including the Battle of Cold Harbor.
Read and enjoy!
Great Book.......2004-08-10
Like Rhea's other books, this book is meticulously researched and Rhea continues to offer his analysis of everything surrounding both armies, most interestingly the personality conflicts in the chains of command.
However, there were a few things in this book that made it the least readable book among the 4 books of his Overland Campaign series:
#1 - The amount of technical detail makes the reading in some spots very bland. This was not a problem in any of the other 3 books.
#2 - This book had a thesis type feel to it because Rhea sets out to prove not only that the Cold Harbor campaign didn't make Grant a butcher, but also that Grant and Lee were equals whose generalships were at times great and at times shoddy.
In my opinion, Rhea is not giving Lee enough credit for his repulse of Grant in every major campaign of the Overland campaign from the Wilderness to Cold Harbor. Other than May 12, the Army of the Potomac could not claim a tactical victory in any serious contest, despite having a 2 to 1 advantage in manpower.
Lee's defenses were masterful through the North Anna River. He suffered dysentery and was ill throughout the Cold Harbor portion of the Overland Campaign and his subordinates were able to defend the line against the Union's assaults.
Rhea credits Grant for continuing to move forward in the face of repulse after repulse, which certainly is a testament to his aggressive nature. However, Rhea writes as if Lee's army is on equal footing with Grant's army throughout the book. Given his incredible deficiency in manpower, it's hard to hold it against Lee that he was unable to wrest the initiative away.
Lee's mistakes in the Cold Harbor campaign can be attributed to the fog of war. Grant and Meade don't even personally supervise the Confederate lines before ordering assaults. And while Rhea points out that both armies had lost nearly the same proportion of strength, that still means Grant had lost 22,000 more casualties than Lee in the span of a month.
#3 - Rhea's book doesn't cover the entire conclusion of the Cold Harbor campaign, although I assume it's likely he'll cover the "truce controversy" in the next book, since this one only covers up to June 3. Rhea offers plenty of proof that points to Grant being a tactician, not a butcher. At the same time, this book doesn't cover the fact that Grant needlessly left the wounded to die on the field instead of offering official truces as dictated by the rules of warfare, knowing full well that most of the wounded were his own men.
Regardless of these reservations, thankfully Rhea leaves the book hanging with the seeming intention of writing a sequel covering the armies' movements toward the James.
Book Description
This digital document is an article from Journal of Southern History, published by Southern Historical Association on February 1, 2004. The length of the article is 564 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.
Citation Details
Title: Cold Harbor: Grant and Lee, May 26-June 3, 1864.(Book Review)
Author: Lynda Lasswell Crist
Publication:
Journal of Southern History (Refereed)
Date: February 1, 2004
Publisher: Southern Historical Association
Volume: 70
Issue: 1
Page: 162(2)
Article Type: Book Review
Distributed by Thomson Gale
Book Description
Considerably revised, this edition of Documents in World History
gives professors a large variety of primary sources from all areas of the world.
The book retains its global emphasis and includes more primary sources that balance social and cultural history with standard selections, political coverage, and fuller coverage of Africa and the Middle East, including Persia. Several individual passages have been replaced or augmented to provide greater richness and interest. Materials on social issues have also been augmented.
Customer Reviews:
Deeply, deeply disappointed.......2006-03-08
This book represents the nadir of world history: wide-ranging, superficially impressive, and totally devoid of real scholarship. "Documents in World History" seemed like an excellent resource for a world history course. However, it is written by people who are obviously unqualified.
For a good compendium of primary documents for a world history course, I would recommend "World History" by Howard Spodek (the accompanying supplements, listed on the publisher's website, are promising as well).
The first things which surprised me was the poor production quality of this book. For the ridiculous price, one would expect at least a few color photos. But beautiful artwork is rendered in stale, pixellated black and white. I imagine this book was published more for the sake of profit than scholarship.
The authors of "Documents in World History" fail utterly to show which documents are important, and which are just curiosities. The entry for Cyrus the Great fails to show this king's mythical status in Iran and even in Greece, which idolized Cyrus despite his attempts (and those of his descendants) to conquer Greece.
The sections on China are pathetic. The authors do not have any understanding of Confucianism or Chinese literature.
The greatest writer in the Chinese language, Su Shi, has only one poem in this collection. Yet that gives the authors an opportunity to display their total ignorance of China, its language, and even the fact that Chinese people have a surname and a given name. Su Shi has his name misspelled as "Sushi". Another important writer, Bai Juyi, has his name morphed into Bo Zhuyi, which can be quite confusing because "Ju" and "Zhu" are totally different in Chinese. This may seem like nitpicking, but imagine if the authors had misspelled the names of Shakespeare AND Dickens because they couldn't tell the difference between the letters "z" and "k".
Book Description
Wheeler and Ganji introduce many topics that engineers need to master in order to plan, design and document a successful experiment or measurement system. The volume offers thorough discussions of topics often ignored or merely touched upon by other books, including modern computerized data acquisition systems, electrical output measuring devices, and in-depth coverage of experimental uncertainty analysis. The authors detail general characteristics of measurement systems, measurement systems with electrical signals, computerized data acquisition systems, discrete sampling and analysis of time-varying signals, statistical analysis of experimental data, experimental uncertainty analysis, measurement of solid-mechanical quantities, measurement of pressure, temperature and humidity, measurement of fluid flow rate, fluid velocity, fluid level, and combustion pollutants, dynamic behavior of measurement systems, as well as guidelines for planning and documenting experiments. For practicing engineers of all kinds.
Customer Reviews:
Good.......2005-09-18
This book is a great resource for experimentation and tables for and type of statistcs class.
Average customer rating:
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ASIN: 0079137814 |
Book Description
The methodology engineers need to plan and conduct experiments to quantify cause-and-effect mechanisms in complex systems
Updated to include the latest in experiment design, this breakthrough resource offers a comprehensive framework for the sequential building of knowledge -- a model for improvement -- that is key to making improvements. Step by step, you discover the tools and properties of sound experiments, the methods of planned experiments, and their application to the design of new and improved products and services.
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A serious book for quality practitioners.......2000-03-14
This is a book about quality improvement via proven techniques of statistical experiment design. It is full of illustrative examples, with mathematical details kept to a minimum. It is an excellent source of reference for industry personnel interested in improving the performance of products and processes beyond the deployment of the usual technical (engineering) approaches.
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MacArthur Competence Assessment Tool for Clinical Research(MacCAT-CR)
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Is using children as research subjects ever justified? Are there limits to such use? Does the fact that children are medically and psychosocially different from adults have implications for research? What can we learn from the history of the use and abuse of children as research subjects? Do parents have the authority to volunteer their children for research projects? How should children participate in the decision to be involved in research? How should research risks be assessed and balanced? These perplexing questions and others are addressed by a distinguished group of experts in the field of biomedical and behavioral research with children. This book adopts an integrated multidisciplinary approach which uses science, ethics, and law as guides for exploring these most difficult issues. The tension between acquiring important new knowledge and fulfilling the obligation to protect children from exploitation and harm is a recurring theme. As the first book to be devoted solely to the science, ethics, and law of research with children, it is an indispensable resource to physicians, psychologists, educators, lawyers, ethicists, Institutional Review Board members, child advocates and others involved in performing or reviewing research with children.
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