Reviews for Autumn of glory

The average rating for Autumn of glory based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2011-08-12 00:00:00 John Doe I do wish I could rate this classic much higher. Alas, I have some great reservations. The book is ENTIRELY about the generals and their squabbles. Just about no one comes off as competent; instead we have a series of self-important idiots fighting over...well who knows why they are fighting. You start to think the average Rebel soldier must be a fool to follow the likes of Bragg, Polk, Johnston, Hood, Hardee, etc. Perhaps they were. Certainly Connelly never explains why they did. So instead we have a parade of failure, a kind of great chain of idiocy. The narrative is dry and staid, with flashes of brilliant observation, although every plan has some flaw that the general does not recognize. While true, here it gets as predictable. You can almost see it coming and know that this will be just another reason for another terrible defeat. Now, if you want to know about army politics and back-biting, this book has no equal. Indeed, it ought to be required reading for any organization wracked by in-fighting. In the end, I liked volume one better. True, the prose was no better there, but it was for my money more original. It was less detailed, but Autumn of Glory is a wonderful example of detail for detail's sake and its numbing effects. Am I too harsh? Maybe. The information here is good. I just think it needed an editor. There is a great book inside this one.

Review # 2 was written on 2013-12-29 00:00:00 Mark West Way too much perspective from only the generals' point of view for my taste. Almost no content from the point of view of the front line private soldier, which I enjoy the most. You can tell that Connelly researched the correspondence and original sources very meticulously, and did like how he utilized the "fog of war" perspective, debunking many post-war revisions based on what was known by whom at exactly what point in time. Looking at military decisions with this in mind, many of them that looked bad or incorrect after the fact, do start to make some more sense.