Reasonably well-written and plausible, with excellent period photographs as a bonus. Still, there’s so much good Civil War...
What if the Civil War had ended in the summer of 1863?
Those who suspect that former Speaker of the House Gingrich’s politics hinge on getting even for Appomattox may be surprised to read in the pages of this tome, the third volume in his conscripted Civil War trilogy (Gettysburg, 2003; Grant Comes East, 2004), that the North’s superiority lay in the unified power of the federal government: “That is the paradox and the curse of their system even more than ours, states’ rights,” says Union politico Elihu Washburne, though that may just be co-author Forstchen talking. The premise is this: on the third day of Gettysburg, Lee realizes that it would be a waste to send Pickett’s men against the well-protected foe, orders a wheeling action, and carries the day. As this installment picks up, the rebels threaten to torch Carlisle Barracks in Pennsylvania. The Yankees, spurred by U.S. Grant, are gathering strength; Sickles’s boys beat up on Pickett’s division, poor lads, but Sickles falls; and Lee’s forces turn to the foot of Maryland’s Catoctin Mountains to face down McPherson’s opposing army. In the ensuing bloodbath, George Custer is felled by an exploding railcar (“Damn rotten place to die, he thought. Out in the open, after a damn good charge. That’s how I wanted it, Custer’s Last Charge”), lots of Billy Yanks and Johnny Rebs die, and the contending armies drain each other’s veins. And yet, and yet, the North has reserves and industry, the South now nothing, and in August 1863, there at Monocracy Junction, Lee realizes that he has nothing left to fight with. With Grant’s generous surrender terms in hand—among them a promise that, with Southerners back in office, the unified federal government will resume come January 1864—Lee makes his way back to Richmond, and the U.S. lives happily ever after.
Reasonably well-written and plausible, with excellent period photographs as a bonus. Still, there’s so much good Civil War history to read that this what-if exercise seems more than a touch unnecessary.Pub Date: June 6, 2005
ISBN: 0-312-34298-5
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2005
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
