Berry Craig

Being an account of politics and military action in the Jackson Purchase region--basically the area west of the Tennessee River--of Kentucky during the War of the Rebellion. This book is meticulously researched but less than interesting. The first half of the book is extraordinarily tiresome, consisting mainly of nobodies, mostly anonymous armchair generals and taproom Calhouns, writing incendiary letters to the editor of their local newspapers, all of which seem to be named the Journal. Even the local politicians and state legislators who appear are not well known; the author might have considered relaxing the scholarly convention that characters are introduced only once and jogged our memories with a reminder or two of who these men are. Similarly, the numerous localities mentioned are rarely places anybody outside of Kentucky will have heard of; to have issued this without a map is unconscionable. The second half of the book is better, as the cast of characters narrows and consists of better-known individuals, but even here, there are too many unit histories; even among local historians and Civil War buffs, few will be interested in unit musters of the such-and-such battalion. This book is splendidly researched, and there's nothing wrong with the author's writing style, but it takes a great deal of grim determination on the part of a general reader to finish it.… (altro)