Lee's Miserables: Life in the Army of Northern Virginia from the Wilderness to Appomattox
A historian with the South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Power has written an excellent study of life in the Army of Northern Virginia in the Civil War's final year. The result is an outstanding example of the new military history similar in type and quality to Reid Mitchell's Civil War Soldiers (LJ 9/15/88) and James McPherson's For Cause and Comrades (LJ 3/15/97). Exhaustively researched, this revised doctoral dissertation is based on a wide variety of letters and diaries drawn from manuscript sources throughout the Confederate South. In chronological fashion, Power traces the men's cautious optimism after the Wilderness campaign, where soldiers wrote of "high spirits," to the rampant despair of the spring of 1865. Power covers the standard topics: morale, rations, home front, and the like. His very well-written book gives readers a you-are-there experience, and the final chapter is a superb historiographical overview of recent titles in the field. A final note on the title: Victor Hugo's classic had just been translated into English when some of Lee's more literate soldiers adopted the title to suit their own situation.?Stephen G. Weisner, Springfield Technical Community Coll., MACopyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.