Woke up this morning to learn that Newsweek offered a nice review of The Civil War: The First Year Told by Those Who Lived It.
However, far more disturbing for those who see me as some sort of left-leaning presentist PC liberal (you know who you are): The Conservative Book Club has also picked up the book. This follows last month’s review in The Weekly Standard, not exactly a liberal rag. As the reviewer said:
Best of all, the material appears to have been selected not with an eye to influencing opinion but enabling comprehension. No particular argument is favored, no participant is slighted; the emphasis is on painting an authoritative picture of the national crisis as it appeared at the time to the people who endured it. Accordingly, the careful reasoning of Jefferson Davis is granted equal status with the impassioned conviction of William Seward, the cool detachment of Henry Adams is paired with the verbose equivocation of James Buchanan. The arguments for the Union are granted equal weight with the causes of Secession, and vice versa, and judgment is left to the discretion of the reader.
The world is not quite so simple as some would have us believe.
Your liberal friends should be thrilled at the Newsweek review. Hard to find a more left-leaning institution in American journalism than the steadily-shrinking Newsweak. The Standard review is impressive.