Civil War Spies Book

The scholarship in Ninety-Eight Days is great, the writing is excellent, and I absolutely loved the structure: Grabau tells the story in parallel, from each side's perspective and knowing only what they know, as opposed to an omniscient third-party overhead view. While this doesn't make Pemberton look like a military genius, it definitely does make some of his errors and strange decisions a lot more understandable. He wasn't stupid; but he didn't know what he didn't know, he made some incorrect assumptions, and (most dam ning) vacillated at times instead of acting decisively. But one really gets an understanding of the situations he was in.

I think my only beefs are the use of modern/anachronistic military terminology (although, to be fair, Grabau uses the terminology clearly and effectively), and the fact that the maps are all consigned to the back of the book rather than interspersed with the narrative at appropriate points. I follow why he did this, as he refers to some of the same maps in multiple places, but it really requires a two-bookmark method of reading that I find a little distracting. The maps, despite the arrangement, are excellent.

I enthusiastically recommend this book to anyone who has read an initial overview of the Vicksburg campaign and wants to take a deeper dive into it.