Synopses & Reviews
Review
"Although Chancellorsville, the unnamed battle in The Red Badge of Courage, epitomized Civil War battlefield experience for Stephen Crane, most military historians have viewed it more abstractly as a great chessboard on which Lee made some of the best moves of the war and Fighting Joe Hooker some of the worst. Furgurson's new study of the battle, the first in 30 years, has the merit of providing both personal and strategic perspectives. Drawing on an impressive array of firsthand accounts, Furgurson vividly describes the bloody fighting in the densely wooded Wilderness. At the same time he clarifies the strategic and tactical complexities of the battle by portraying it as a series of encounters rather than a single continuous action. Civil War buffs will find nothing new in Furgurson's conclusion that Stonewall Jackson's accidental death at Chancellorsville doomed the Confederates to defeat at Gettysburg several weeks later, but they will appreciate his emphasis on the importance of combat leadership at all levels." Reviewed by Daniel Weiss, Virginia Quarterly Review (Copyright 2006 Virginia Quarterly Review)