"This fascinating social history, through Golay's expert use of sources, brings to life a time in America's past that promised so much but delivered so little, expecially to former slaves."-Publishers Weekly "A tautly woven narrative history..Lively and readable."-Kirkus Reviews In a fascinating approach that allows the voices of those touched by the Civil War to speak for themselves, gifted writer Michael Golay shows the impact of victory and defeat on the ordinary Americans who both influenced events and were caught up in them. Using illuminating new material, much of it previously unpublished, Golay takes a unique perspective by interweaving personal histories of soldiers and civilians with the larger events of the Civil War. Among the events of this bitter conflict, Golay illuminates the impact of Sherman's march through Georgia and the Carolinas, the despair caused by the assassination of Lincoln, the first bitter weeks of armistice, the immediate postwar life in a devastated, chaotic South, and the promise of freedom for African American slaves. Through the letters, diaries, and other literary remains of those who experienced the war, we gain a vivid, panoramic look at the effects of a bitter struggle and at the efforts of both sides to work toward a solution to problems where effective answers were elusive. In his latest, Golay (To Gettysburg & Beyond) chronicles the collapse of the Confederate army and the beginning of southern Reconstruction, once more revisiting this painful and tumultuous period by examining the lives of the newly emancipated and political, military, civilian, academic, and philanthropic figures both prominent and obscure. Through these cameos, he relates the old story of the defeated South's halting attempts to resurrect its bankrupt leadership and postwar agrarian economy, he also profiles its occupiers, a shaky coalition of rigid abolitionist missionaries, hardened Federal soldiers, disillusioned black troops, Yankee speculators, and other assorted opportunists. Golay's final chapter follows the post-Reconstruction lives and careers of his principal characters. Is this work a major contribution to Civil War/Reconstruction historiography? No. Is it an interesting read with an engaging approach? Yes. Golay's inclusion of a time line and a "cast of characters" section provides useful preliminary reference tools. Recommended for public and academic libraries.AJohn Carver Edwards, Univ. of Georgia Libs., Athens Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. The eminent Civil War historian Bruce Catton viewed the closing months of the war as a remarkable combination of nobility and meanness. In this striking account of those months, Golay reaffirms that view by utilizing the personal remembrances of a variety of soldiers, civilians, and politicians who directly experienced the final ordeal. In vivid, often heartbreaking accounts, Golay includes Sherman's devastation of the Carolinas, the Lincoln assassination, and the mustering out of both the victors and the vanquished. Hovering over all the accounts is the aura of a nation deeply ravaged, both physically and psychologically. This is a keenly moving and important work that should be a vital addition to any Civil War collection. Jay Freeman A tautly woven narrative history of the last months of an awful war and the early days of a necessary peace. No subject of American history is less in need of more coverage than the Civil War. Yet Golay (To Gettysburg and Beyond, 1994) has found a fresh way to explore the conflict. Based on apt (and some seldom used) manuscripts, letters, and diaries, his book chronicles the last months of war and the early months of peace through the lives of 21 little remembered figureswomen as well as men, southerners as well as northerners. Lively and readable, the tale captures the struggles, costs, exhaustion, and despair of those who remained at home, as well as of those who fought. Its not a book that glorifies war. Instead it records the devastation of the Civil War to body, mind, spirit, and possession from the fall of Richmond in 1864 until after Lincoln's assassination, when peace fell again upon the land. But it does so by trying to reconcile the awful experiences of Unionists and Confederates while totally ignoring those in the middle: African-Americans, slave and free. Astonishingly, enslaved southerners, freed slaves, and northern freemen are scarcely in attendance here except as people done to rather than doing; and the fighting men and others we meet are either of the Southern plantation gentry or the solid Northern middle classas if laboring and poor people in both sections weren't deeply affected by the war. No doubt their omission is due to the accident of surviving sources; the poor usually don't write long letters and leave them for their heirs. Nevertheless, as a result of such grave oversight, the book ends up being only a half-history of its promising subject, out of keeping with