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Title: Taken at the Flood: Robert E. Lee and Confederate Strategy in the Maryland Campaign of 1862 by Joseph L. Harsh ISBN: 0-87338-631-0 Publisher: Kent State University Press Pub. Date: 10 September, 1999 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $45.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.33 (6 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Best study ever of the Sharpsburg Campaign
Comment: Other histories of the critical 1862 Sharpsburg campaign pale in comparison to this masterwork. Nobody else's work---nobody---can come close to Harsh's study.
Do not miss this; it is the standard by which all studies of the Sharpsburg campaign must be measured.
Rating: 1
Summary: A most painful book to read!!
Comment: I just finished reading "Taken at the Flood: Robert E. Lee and Confederate Strategy in the Maryland Campaign of 1862"
by Joseph L. Harsh.
Ouch!!!! Talk about painful!!! Harsh (a history professor who grew up in Hagerstown) simply cannot write!! Some people can write well; others write poorly. Harsh is at the bottom of the latter group. (I feel sorry for his students -- they probably suffered severe ear and brain trauma from his lectures. And he writes as if he were lecturing!!)
He LOVES R.E. Lee. (According to Harsh, everything that went wrong was someone else's fault -- without exception!!) Then there are Harsh's numerous "moments" when he tells you what a particular person MUST have been thinking at any given time -- as if Harsh (or anyone else!!) could know! Finally come are his analyses of various events and situations. In Harsh's eyes, all ideas that contradict his opinions OBVIOUSLY MUST be wrong -- it's just plain "foolish" to think otherwise.
It's too bad that Harsh just didn't tell what happened and allowed us to form our own judgements. (By the way, he plays pretty "fast and loose" with the facts. Plus, he omits vital information that doesn't correspond to his interpretation.)
In his preface, Harsh even has the audacity to state that, besides his book, there are only one or two other books that cover the Maryland Campaign in depth. Well, I have been studying Antietam for over 35 years, have been there several hundred times, and have read literally thousands of books, articles, and documents about Antietam. Harsh is full of it!!
If you were thinking of buying this book, don't bother. You can gain just as much by pulling out all your teeth with a pair of pliars, then dropping a 200-pound lead weight on your foot.
Rating: 5
Summary: Well Done
Comment: I agree with much the prior reviewers have said. Although I am not a Civil War buff, I found the book readable. I appreciate his methodology also. Harsh attempts to reconstruct the intelligence available to Lee when he made crucial decisions and to assess his decisions based on the moves he could have made given what he knew and in light of his strategic aims for the campaign. All historians should stick by this method. He also does a very creditable job in his attempt to ascertain what Lee knew. On balance very well researched and well argued. I especially enjoyed the end in which he places his argument within the context of existing historiography on the subject. One criticism I have relates to the maps, which is discussed in the review of one of Dr. Harsh's other books. I bought Landscape Turned Red as the result of reading Taken at the Flood. And the maps are much more helpful in that Sears's book. When you are dealing with a lot of different place names and different corps moving around, it makes the flow a lot easier.
(Disclaimer: I sat in on a few classes of Dr. Harsh's as an undergraduate).
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Title: Sounding the Shallows: A Confederate Companion for the Maryland Campaign of 1862 by Joseph L. Harsh ISBN: 0873386418 Publisher: Kent State University Press Pub. Date: April, 2000 List Price(USD): $18.00 |
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Title: Confederate Tide Rising: Robert E. Lee and the Making of Southern Strategy, 1861-1862 by Joseph L. Harsh ISBN: 0873385802 Publisher: Kent State University Press Pub. Date: 01 January, 1998 List Price(USD): $35.00 |
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Title: Washington's Crossing (Pivotal Moments in American History) by David Hackett Fischer ISBN: 0195170342 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: 01 January, 2004 List Price(USD): $35.00 |
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Title: To The Gates of Richmond : The Peninsula Campaign by Stephen W. Sears ISBN: 0618127135 Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Pub. Date: 01 May, 2001 List Price(USD): $17.00 |
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Title: Two Great Rebel Armies: An Essay in Confederate Military History by Richard M. McMurry ISBN: 0807845698 Publisher: University of North Carolina Press Pub. Date: 01 February, 1996 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
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