Donald L. Miller is the John Henry MacCracken Professor of History Emeritus at Lafayette College and author of ten books, including Vicksburg, and Masters of the Air, currently being made into a television series by Tom Hanks. He has hosted, coproduced, or served as historical consultant for more than thirty television documentaries and has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, and other publications.
“A superb account of both military leadership and soldierly
warfare. . . . Mr. Miller has done a prodigious amount of research.
. . It is an epic story in itself but of course one part of the
grand epic of the Civil War. Books like Vicksburg are exactly what
Thomas Hardy had in mind when he wrote that ‘war makes rattling
good history.’”
*The Wall Street Journal*
“A quarter of a million slaves lived in the lower Mississippi
Valley when the Civil War broke out. In Donald Miller's
Vicksburg, we learn not only the story of the war's great western
turning point, but how Ulysses S. Grant evolved into a military
emancipator of most of those African Americans and therefore with
time crushed the Confederacy. Carefully researched and
written with sizzling and persuasive prose, Miller has found the
way to write both military and emancipation history in one profound
package. Never have headquarters, slave quarters, and the
ultimate purpose of the war been so seamlessly and brilliantly
demonstrated.”
*David W. Blight, Sterling Professor of History, Yale University,
and Pulitzer Prize-winning Author of Frederick Douglass: Prophet of
Freedom*
“The fullest and best history of the Vicksburg campaign.”
*James M. McPherson, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Battle Cry of
Freedom*
"While there have been many books written about Ulysses S. Grant,
no recent publication surpasses Miller’s work in terms of capturing
the contradictory nature of this man. . . . Miller has crafted an
insightful and striking look at the actions of General Grant at a
turning point not only of the Civil War but also of American
history. This is a great book and one that Civil war enthusiasts
should read.”
*Civil War Courier*
“Miller has compiled the best single-volume treatment of the
Vicksburg Campaign. His riveting narrative is well researched and
highly informative. . . . A tour de force.”
*ARMY magazine*
“[Vicksburg] was the most satisfying Union campaign of the war, and
Miller chronicles it with aplomb. An expert, detailed account that
should remain the definitive account for quite some time.”
*Kirkus Reviews (starred review)*
"Authoritative, complete, engaging, and enjoyable. . . . Brings to
the reader all the rich and crucial history of Ulysses S. Grant's
Vicksburg campaign. . . . Vicksburg will become a Civil War
standard."
*LearnCivilWarHistory.com*
"This is a magnificent book, certainly one of the very best
ever written about the Civil War. It has breadth and depth, and it
is written in a way that makes the reader truly understand not only
the battle and siege of Vicksburg, not only the Civil War, but
war itself."
*John M. Barry, author of Rising Tide*
"Readers will marvel at how Grant—a washed-up dry-goods clerk at
the beginning of the Civil War—acquires the power and skill that
made him the mastermind at Vicksburg of the largest amphibious
army-navy operation staged by the U.S. military until D-Day. In a
narrative taut with drama, Miller recounts how this resolute Union
crusader takes the war down the Mississippi. . . . War history
alive with probing intelligence and irresistible passion."
*Booklist*
“Miller deftly conjures the campaign's uncertainty
and drama—the surprises that lay around every bend of the
region's forbidding terrain and swampy waterways. At the heart of
his story is U.S. Grant, who emerges here as a master of maneuver
and improvisation, and a hero made human and real. This is military
history at its best.”
*Elizabeth R. Varon, author of Armies of Deliverance: A New History
of the Civil War*
“Elegant. . . . Enlightening. . . . Well-researched and
well-told.”
*Publishers Weekly*
“This superbly written narrative is a portrait of America’s
greatest soldier, warts and all, an accounting of Grant’s moral
evolution on the slave question, of his many tactical gambles and
errors, as well as his strategic triumph in the decisive campaign
of America’s most important war. We also meet ordinary
soldiers, hear the iron dice roll, smell swamps and river lands
that impede key logistics in the far-flung Western theater, feel
the summer heat and thickly humid air. Most remarkably, we are
guided up and down the Mississippi over the course of the greatest
amphibious campaign of the 19th century.”
*Cathal J. Nolan, author of The Allure of Battle, winner of the
2018 Gilder Lehrman Prize for Military History*
“Grant has had his biographers over the years, but in Miller he has
finally found a writer who captures him in his completeness as a
man and a military leader, overcoming heavy odds and repeated
failures to win the decisive campaign of the war.”
*Rob Citino, Executive Director, Institute for the Study of War and
Democracy, and Samuel Zemurray Stone Senior Historian, The National
World War II Museum*
"Miller provides important context for the final siege of Vicksburg
by explaining why the city was vital to control of the Mississippi.
. . . He superbly integrates events in Washington, keeping primary
attention on those in the field of battle and emphasizing the role
of freedmen in the victory. . . . Highly recommended."
*Library Journal*
 |
Ask a Question About this Product More... |
|
