Grant and Sherman: The Friendship That Won the Civil War

New York, NY: Farrar Straus Giroux, 2005. First edition. First Edition [stated]. First Printing [stated]. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. Sewn binding. Cloth over boards. [18], 460, [2] pages. Illustrations. Maps. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Signed by author. Signed bookplate on half-title. From an obituary posed on-line: Distinguished historian Charles Bracelen Flood was born in New York City. He displayed impressive talent as a non-fiction writer, with a special interest in the Far East. He spent a year as an embedded correspondent in Vietnam - and produced one of his most controversial books, The War of the Innocents. Back in America, Flood turned to America's revolution. Rise and Fight Again won the New York American Revolution's Round Table's Annual Award in 1976. Next Flood turned to the war that disrupted the Union. Lee - The Last Years was a revelatory look at how Robert E. Lee reacted to the South's defeat. It won the Colonial Dames of America Annual Book Award. This was followed by Grant and Sherman -the Friendship that Won the Civil War. The Washington Post described it as "beautifully defined...a powerful and illuminating story of the military collaboration that won the war for the Union." Salon named it one of the "Top 12 Civil War Books Ever Written." Derived from a Kirkus review: Flood opens with an account of Ulysses S. Grant, the Mexican War hero and former Army captain who, in 1860 at the age of 38, found himself a clerk in a store in Illinois. As for Sherman, the beginning of the conflict found him heading a military school in Louisiana; after fighting at Bull Run, he was assigned to head a force on the Kentucky-Tennessee frontier. Sherman was eventually allowed to raise a division of his own. Assigned to the western campaign under Grant, Sherman got his first taste of his commander's ways at Shiloh. Flood's overarching theme is Grant and Sherman's friendship, born in fire. The book becomes a careful survey of the Civil War in the West. Of interest, in particular, is Flood's account of how Sherman, always in close contact with Grant, conducted his scorched-earth campaigns in Georgia and South Carolina-and how both generals detested the press. A worthy contribution to the Civil War literature.