How the Civil War changed the face of war
The Civil War represented a momentous change in the character of war. It
combined the projection of military might across a continent on a scale
never before seen with an unprecedented mass mobilization of peoples.
Yet despite the revolutionizing aspects of the Civil War, its leaders
faced the same uncertainties and vagaries of chance that have vexed
combatants since the days of Thucydides and the Peloponnesian War. A
Savage War sheds critical new light on this defining chapter in
military history.
In a masterful narrative that propels readers from the first shots fired
at Fort Sumter to the surrender of Robert E. Lee's army at Appomattox,
Williamson Murray and Wayne Wei-siang Hsieh bring every aspect of the
battlefield vividly to life. They show how this new way of waging war
was made possible by the powerful historical forces unleashed by the
Industrial Revolution and the French Revolution, yet how the war was far
from being simply a story of the triumph of superior machines. Despite
the Union's material superiority, a Union victory remained in doubt for
most of the war. Murray and Hsieh paint indelible portraits of Abraham
Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, William Tecumseh Sherman, and other major
figures whose leadership, judgment, and personal character played such
decisive roles in the fate of a nation. They also examine how the Army
of the Potomac, the Army of Northern Virginia, and the other major
armies developed entirely different cultures that influenced the war's
outcome.
A military history of breathtaking sweep and scope, A Savage War
reveals how the Civil War ushered in the age of modern warfare.
