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The Civil War
The National Geographic Society presents an intimate glimpse in to the lives of the men and women who suffered through the Civil War. This legacy is stripped of the romanticism and focuses on providing an account that is factual told from the letters, photographs, diaries and newspapers of the era. Beautifully illustrated, this book will engage the entire family. D-4
215 pages, Hardcover
First published June 1, 1969
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
March 5, 2024
This is personally a hard book to rate. The narrative is dull and jumpy. It features the usual heroes: Grant, Sherman, Lee, and Jackson. Most others are footnotes. Yet, I love the art. The paintings featured are in some cases rather obscure. Also, this is the book that got me into history and the Civil War and it was through those images. I also like that slavery is not ignored, but it also avoids the self-righteous tone of many current Civil War histories.
May 2, 2021
A decent overview of the American Civil War, or the War of Nothern Aggression, from start to finish. I read through this relatively quickly and this a pretty standard read: nothing new or interesting to be honest. The artwork and pictures alone are worth reading this book.
June 14, 2023
Half-sized coffee table history with plenty of photos, paintings, drawings and maps.
September 17, 2015
The Civil War by Robert Paul Jordan (National Geographic Society 1969) (973.7). I was inspired to read this by the recent showing on our local PBS station of Ken Burns' magnificent documentary, "The Civil War." I had seen Burns' film before, so I thought that this book might give me the National Geographic perspective. The book was wonderful; it certainly lived up to the National Geographic standard. The Civil War was arranged in sections by the year of the war as was the Burns' documentary; it is a worthy overview of the war in which more Americans died than any other. My rating: 7/10, finished 9/16/15.
June 20, 2016
I read this as a teenager -- the Civil War was a favourite period of mine. The best feature of this book (I thought) was the detailed double page illustrations of the great battles -- I spent ages examining each one!
January 12, 2025
This is the most poignant rendering of the story of America’s Civil War that I have ever read, and I have read and studied more than three dozen other volumes about its battles and its participants. Robert Paul Jordan relates anecdotes and little known facts about a subject we all know broadly and sometimes minutely. But these 211 slick paper pages, including multiple illustrations as only National Geographic can produce them, make a reader live it.
He begins with a lengthy first chapter of careful history about the emotional dissension between the citizens over the idea of eliminating slavery in all of the states—and how to go about doing so. By way of taking his young family to visit preserved historic locations—southern plantations in Mississippi and Louisiana, the home of Ulysses Grant in Illinois, Harper’s Ferry Arsenal in Virginia, an Old Slave Mart Museum in Charleston, South Carolina, as well as to the island of Fort Sumter, a place called Fort Barrancas in Pensacola, Florida (where he says the actual first shots of the war were fired when it was defended by a small unit of federal soldiers from an attempted dawn attack by local secessionists), and a hundred-plus-year-old drum-making business in Vermont, among other places—the author reminisces eloquently. Unvisitable events such as the Dred Scott decision by the Supreme Court and the publishing of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin novel, plus the series of legislative compromises over allowing slave practice in new western states, are also noted for their influences on people’s emotions.
And throughout the story, he visits the remains of battlegrounds, some preserved and others long since grown over with weeds or modernity, sometimes accompanied by Park Rangers who recall the sad histories. The five follow-up chapters are dedicated to each year of combat, 1861 to 1865. He visits unmarked graves of fallen soldiers, and a memorial marker for a pair of South Carolina brothers, one a Confederate brigadier general, the other a Union naval commander, who fought each other at Fort Walker on Hilton Head Island. He relates the faltering errors of both sides—and the redoubling of resolve of each, as time relentlessly consumed them. Did you know that the Confederacy unsuccessfully tried to conquer New Mexico, Colorado, and California, in order to claim the gold and silver mining areas to finance themselves?
Despite hunger, ragged clothing (and missing shoes), exhaustion, illnesses and infectious diseases from filth, hideous wounds, and agonizing deaths even before the end of 1862, each side kept to its “declared” principles and fought on. It took two and a quarter more years of increasing suffering, spreading among civilians, especially in the South, until General Grant persuaded General Lee that the Army of Northern Virginia should surrender to the Army of the Potomac, and then offered reconciliation with extraordinarily generous terms of parole to soldiers and officers. After several other fields of fighting further south were likewise resolved, the war stopped, but the sorrow would last much longer, especially after the assassination of President Lincoln. So many bodies were never identified on battlegrounds, including that of a great uncle of the author, a teen-aged private from Ohio whose letters home were occasionally quoted for us.
This book is a fitting tribute to the memory of a really close call to the collapse of the United States of America.
He begins with a lengthy first chapter of careful history about the emotional dissension between the citizens over the idea of eliminating slavery in all of the states—and how to go about doing so. By way of taking his young family to visit preserved historic locations—southern plantations in Mississippi and Louisiana, the home of Ulysses Grant in Illinois, Harper’s Ferry Arsenal in Virginia, an Old Slave Mart Museum in Charleston, South Carolina, as well as to the island of Fort Sumter, a place called Fort Barrancas in Pensacola, Florida (where he says the actual first shots of the war were fired when it was defended by a small unit of federal soldiers from an attempted dawn attack by local secessionists), and a hundred-plus-year-old drum-making business in Vermont, among other places—the author reminisces eloquently. Unvisitable events such as the Dred Scott decision by the Supreme Court and the publishing of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin novel, plus the series of legislative compromises over allowing slave practice in new western states, are also noted for their influences on people’s emotions.
And throughout the story, he visits the remains of battlegrounds, some preserved and others long since grown over with weeds or modernity, sometimes accompanied by Park Rangers who recall the sad histories. The five follow-up chapters are dedicated to each year of combat, 1861 to 1865. He visits unmarked graves of fallen soldiers, and a memorial marker for a pair of South Carolina brothers, one a Confederate brigadier general, the other a Union naval commander, who fought each other at Fort Walker on Hilton Head Island. He relates the faltering errors of both sides—and the redoubling of resolve of each, as time relentlessly consumed them. Did you know that the Confederacy unsuccessfully tried to conquer New Mexico, Colorado, and California, in order to claim the gold and silver mining areas to finance themselves?
Despite hunger, ragged clothing (and missing shoes), exhaustion, illnesses and infectious diseases from filth, hideous wounds, and agonizing deaths even before the end of 1862, each side kept to its “declared” principles and fought on. It took two and a quarter more years of increasing suffering, spreading among civilians, especially in the South, until General Grant persuaded General Lee that the Army of Northern Virginia should surrender to the Army of the Potomac, and then offered reconciliation with extraordinarily generous terms of parole to soldiers and officers. After several other fields of fighting further south were likewise resolved, the war stopped, but the sorrow would last much longer, especially after the assassination of President Lincoln. So many bodies were never identified on battlegrounds, including that of a great uncle of the author, a teen-aged private from Ohio whose letters home were occasionally quoted for us.
This book is a fitting tribute to the memory of a really close call to the collapse of the United States of America.
December 29, 2018
"Oh, this is all a weary, long mistake." Major General George Pickett, CSA
This relatively slim volume (200 pages) does a good job of covering the best known features of America's Civil War, proceeding on a year-by-year basis, from early attempts at compromise through the initial hostilities, major battles, and culminating with Lee's surrender at Appomattox and the assassination of Lincoln. Jordan shows respect and, when called for, disapproval of people on both sides of the conflict as he discusses political and military developments, the major personalities of the time, and the heroism and tragedy of the common people who fought and endured through one of our darkest eras.
Jordan's examination of the war is a NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC volume, richly illustrated with drawings, paintings, photographs, and maps in the tradition of that magazine. In the same tradition it is a first person account of Jordan's own travels with his family to the historic sites, and the narrative is loosely framed around those travels. Not only are we introduced to Jordan's wife and their three children (one of whom may in the future look back with something less than enthusiasm on being described as a "trencherman"), but we learn that Jordan's ancestor, Leonidas Jordan, fought on the Union side and sent many quote-worthy letters home to his family. The inclusion of excerpts from these and other letters, as well as the diaries of contemporaries such as the confederate Mary Boykin Chesnut, adds a dark poignancy that helps this brief narrative rise above a mere recitation of dates and battles.
This book could serve as either a good introduction to the Civil War or a useful summary for anyone wishing to review the highlights while still getting a feel for what life was like during that grim and eventful time.
This relatively slim volume (200 pages) does a good job of covering the best known features of America's Civil War, proceeding on a year-by-year basis, from early attempts at compromise through the initial hostilities, major battles, and culminating with Lee's surrender at Appomattox and the assassination of Lincoln. Jordan shows respect and, when called for, disapproval of people on both sides of the conflict as he discusses political and military developments, the major personalities of the time, and the heroism and tragedy of the common people who fought and endured through one of our darkest eras.
Jordan's examination of the war is a NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC volume, richly illustrated with drawings, paintings, photographs, and maps in the tradition of that magazine. In the same tradition it is a first person account of Jordan's own travels with his family to the historic sites, and the narrative is loosely framed around those travels. Not only are we introduced to Jordan's wife and their three children (one of whom may in the future look back with something less than enthusiasm on being described as a "trencherman"), but we learn that Jordan's ancestor, Leonidas Jordan, fought on the Union side and sent many quote-worthy letters home to his family. The inclusion of excerpts from these and other letters, as well as the diaries of contemporaries such as the confederate Mary Boykin Chesnut, adds a dark poignancy that helps this brief narrative rise above a mere recitation of dates and battles.
This book could serve as either a good introduction to the Civil War or a useful summary for anyone wishing to review the highlights while still getting a feel for what life was like during that grim and eventful time.
January 4, 2023
10/10 it was OK. I found myself zoning out quite a few times while reading it, but overall it was a fairly OK book, as broad as it was. It never got too specific, so it really felt like it was more of an introduction to/overview of the war. The writer certainly seemed like he favored the north as one should, but he was also really generous towards the south outside the actual issue of slavery which doesn't sit entirely well with me - praise for Lee and Davis, for example. But this was written in the 60s, things were viewed through a different lens.
September 24, 2025
2.5 stars? It has some great pictures, but I don't think it is a great overview of the Civil War. Its partially a travelogue and partly history. I don't think it did either very well. It assumed the reader already knows quite a bit about the war, jumps from event to event from paragraph to paragraph, sometimes between past and present (author's travels). I think I got some overall insight into the war, but I wouldn't say it was easy to get.
June 22, 2019
Not what I was expecting and I did not finish the book. It was written a little too folksy for my taste, however, that style may garner great appeal to another reader. I don't wish to say anything negative about the book it just didn't click with me.
September 30, 2020
Enjoyed the narrative and the photos and art. It was a good overview of the war, especially of the timeline, and yet included many personal stories.
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July 2, 2022this book had words and I read them so it counts for my reading challenge
March 6, 2019
A good book to get started in learning about the American Revolution. The author and his family visited many of the battle spots of the war including visiting winter camps like Valley Forge. This helped put a personal touch to the book. I'm usually reading about World War II but will be doing more reading on the American Revolution as this book has whetted my appetite for more knowledge on this subject.
October 20, 2011
It was interesting...pictures were great....narrative would have been better if there wasn't so much "Pro-South" wording. But it was informative, good book to read as an introduction to the Civil War.
February 13, 2016
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews