Road to Appomattox/Sourcebk-Cw

By: Unknown

Documenting events from January 1864 to April 1865, an illustrated account of the last days of the Civil War begins with the Fort Pillow Massacre and ends with Lee's surrender at Appomattox Court... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Library Binding
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1562942646
• ISBN13: 9781562942649
• Release Date: March 1993
• Publisher: Millbrook Press
• Length: 96 Pages
• Weight: 1.18 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 7.8" x 10.3"
• Age Range: 10 to 13 years
• Grade Range: Grades 5 to 8

Customer Reviews

Wide variety of illustrations, OK captions, good overview.

This slim volume is one of a series of six "Sourcebooks on the Civil War," all edited by Smith, all illustrations from the Library of Congress, all bargains. Captions are adequately detailed and an additional commentary is given relating the events pictured to the progress of the war. But in some cases the picture selection is curious almost to the point of being perverse. While all the images provide windows on the war, they vary enormously in authenticity. For action scenes, there are some incomparable on-the-spot drawings by the greatly talented Arthur Waud and Edwin Forbes. The book also contains fine period photographs: portraits, forts, ruined cities. But there are far too many lithographs by Currier & Ives, Prang & Co., and the like. Many of these extravagant panoramas are perennially popular, it's true, but they're eternally inaccurate. In these an other instances, text is needed to correct their errors, when an authentic illustration wouldn't require a caveat. In "Battles and Leaders," there's a splendid painting (in black and white) of Grant and Lee at the signing of the surrender, seated at separate tables, as they were in actuality. Instead, this Sourcebook gives us a painfully awkward, primitive, crudely tinted C & I drawing of the two leaders ignoring each other at the same table -- presumably for the sole reason that it's among the Library's holdings. This is one of several similar shortcomings in an otherwise excellent graphics presentation.