Reveille in Washington

Reveille, as every American soldier knows, is the sunrise bugle call that tells everyone in the United States’ armed forces, every day, that the time has come to get up and go to work. And when historian Margaret Leech gave her magisterial 1942 study of Civil War Washington, D.C., the title Reveille......more

This is another fine book that I would never have read, would never have even known existed, without the Time Reading Program, a short-lived book club from the 1960s whose editors chose their selections well. The full list of its books can be found with a quick internet search, and though most are l......more

It's not a battle book (though it has one of the best descriptions of Jubal Early's 1864 "siege" of Washington that I have encountered). Leech keeps her focus on Washington, its residents (the famous, the infamous, everyday people), and the impact of the war on their lives. I was at first amazed at......more

I’ve long had a vague impression of the Civil War as a protracted war of attrrition, pitting an undermanned and undersupplied, but resourceful South against a politically-disorganized Union whose floundering efforts were exacerbated by an ever-changing series of inexperienced military incompetents.......more