Review by Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Dispensing with a chronological march through the life of Confederate General Thomas Jackson, Gwynne presents Jackson's eccentric personality in biographical episodes that he injects into the arc of Jackson's Civil War campaigns and battles. For example, the book covers the future hero's boyhood and his 1850s tenure at the Virginia Military Institute (a rich source of anecdotes of Jackson's oddities) after the 1861 Battle of Bull Run. Gwynne's technique succeeds, thanks to his spry prose and cogent insight, in revealing Jackson's character. Describing him as shy, serious, determined, and profoundly religious, Gwynne captures the stiff, asocial persona Jackson presented to the world. Yet Jackson did exhibit warmer traits in female company, evidenced by Gwynne' quotations of surviving letters, though those don't reveal his feelings about his estrangement from his Unionist sister, Laura. Better known is Jackson's inflexible attitude toward military duty and, most important to history, his tactical and strategic command of warfare. Showing Jackson's exploitation of speed and deception, Gwynne's vivid account of his Civil War run, which ended with his death in the 1863 Battle of Chancellorsville, is a riveting, cover-to-cover read for history buffs.--Taylor, Gilbert Copyright 2014 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Journalist Gwynne follows his bestselling Empire of the Summer Moon with a stimulating study of Confederate Gen. Stonewall Jackson. Jackson today remains a figure of almost mythical proportions and embodies the more heroic elements of the Southern cause. Gwynne, in a primarily chronological narrative, reveals him to have been an early master of modern mobile warfare and a clear-eyed interpreter of what modern "pitiless war was all about." In 1861, Jackson was "part of that great undifferentiated mass of second-rate humanity who weren't going anywhere in life." But underneath his efflorescent eccentricities, he was "highly perceptive and exquisitely sensitive," as well as an "incisive and articulate observer." In the spring of 1862 those qualities shaped the brilliant Shenandoah Valley campaign that reinvigorated a stagnant Confederate war effort and established him as the "most famous military figure in the Western world." Exhaustion limited Jackson's contributions to the Peninsular Campaign, but from Second Bull Run through Antietam to his mortal wounding at Chancellorsville, his achievements and his legend grew. Gwynne tells Jackson's story without editorializing and readers are likely to agree that, without Jackson, Lee "would never again be quite so brilliant," while even in the North Jackson was considered, rather than a rebel, a "gentleman and... fundamentally an American." Maps and 16-page photo insert. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
On the eve of the Civil War, Thomas J. Jackson was a middling professor at the Virginia Military Institute. By June 1862, "Stonewall" Jackson was widely regarded as one of the Confederacy's greatest generals. Gwynne (Empire of the Summer Moon) explores Jackson's meteoric rise through the Confederate ranks via his military actions, most notably at First Manassas and during his legendary 1862 Shenandoah Valley campaign. Attention is also given to his failings, such as his inaction during much of Robert E. Lee's Seven Days campaign. Particularly noteworthy is the author's exploration of the manner in which Jackson's foibles, including his constant refusal to share critical information with subordinates, hindered his capacity as a leader. Gwynne also illustrates how Jackson's shortcomings were overshadowed by his audacity and brilliance in the heat of battle. To the Confederacy, his presence in the field fostered a feeling of invincibility, which is why his death by friendly fire proved so devastating to the South's war effort. VERDICT This popular history is recommended for all readers interested in the Civil War. Academic librarians should also strongly consider James I. Robertson's Stonewall Jackson and Peter Cozzens's Shenandoah 1862. John R. Burch, Campbellsville Univ. Lib., KY (c) Copyright 2014. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Wide-ranging biography of the larger-than-life Confederate leader, a "sobersided, regulation-bound general" who emerges as an ever stranger figure with the passage of years. Texas-based journalist and historian Gwynne, having documented the free-riding Comanches of the plains (Empire of the Summer Moon, 2010), turns to another famed cavalry culture: namely, that of the residents of the valley of Virginia at the time that sectional divisions broke into open civil war. Few cavalrymen were as farsighted and successful as Thomas Jonathan "Stonewall" Jackson (1824-1863), who carried a preternatural seriousness and piety with him at all times. As Gwynne writes, Jackson imagined as he was washing that he was cleansing himself in the blood of Christ and while dressing, might "pray to be cloaked in the Savior's righteousness." Jackson's relentless Christianity did not halt him in the least from assuming the role of avenging angel Robert E. Lee's right-hand man, whose death before Gettysburg deflated the Army of Northern Virginia and marked the beginning of the end of the Southern cause. By the author's account, Jackson was a caring yet hard, nearly tyrannical leader who pushed his men to the limit yet placed himself in every danger he subjected them to. He also habitually denied himself creature comforts in an effort to remain pure, though, as Gwynne points out, sometimes his explanations were less pious than all that. He did not partake of intoxicating drinks, he told a junior officer, "because I like the taste of them, and when I discovered that to be the case I made up my mind at once to do without them altogether." A satisfying biography though less exhaustive in its approach than Robert Krick's Conquering the Valley (1996) and somewhat less fluent than James Robertson's Stonewall Jackson: The Man, the Soldier, the Legend (1997). Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
