April 1865: The Month That Saved America

Jay Winik has essentially taken the bulk of the Civil War, its major actors and causes, and analyzed the entire cataclysmic event in the context of a single month - April 1865. Occasionally I find a book so great that as I read I cannot help 1) annotating the text, willing myself to remember pieces of it and 2) wishing that I might have written it myself. April 1865 is just such a book.

In roughly 400 action packed and beautifully written pages, Winik has provided his readers not only the background on the war itself, but mini-biographies of everyone from Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses Grant (whose real name was Hiram; he became U.S. after he failed to correct a clerical error upon his admission to West Point), Jefferson Davis (middle name: Finis, as in his mother really was done after he, her tenth babe, was born), Robert E. Lee, Nathn Bedford Forrest, Andrew Johnson, John Wilkes Booth, William Sherman, Joe Johnston, and basically every other major general or politician of the era.

The events of a single month - the fall of Richmond, Lee's surrender, the assassination of Lincoln - are presented chronologically, yet with the history of all that proceeded and all that came after flawlessly knitted into their telling. The prose is often quite spare, allowing the events to speak for themselves. It is just as often was is not written that truly emerges, as in the description of Lee's final order to the men of the Army of Northern Virginia. After reproducing the order in full, Winik adds a single, simple sentence that elucidates clearly the relationship between North and South for decades to come. "For generations, General Orders Number 9 would be recited in the South with the same pride as the Gettysburg Address was learned in the North."

I can easily recommend April 1865 to anyone with a love of fine writing, an interest in American history, or an appreciation for the art of a good story, even - or especially - if the story is true. Four stars.