Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era
A single-volume history of the American Civil War era, running from the Mexican War of 1846 through Appomattox, that interweaves the political, economic, and military story of the conflict. Volume 6 of the Oxford History of the United States, it won the 1989 Pulitzer Prize for History.
A third of the book goes by before anybody fires a shot: an antebellum run-up of party politics and economics that "might prove somewhat stultifying if you are more interested in era's martial aspects," and dense enough that one reader advises you to "consult the Internet or other works as a supplement" to get through it (the opening stretch of a 936 page book). The method wears on you too, quotation laid on quotation until it reads, to one detractor, like "a documentary rather than a history" with "the surreptitious bias of a modern newspaper." Hold out to the end and the payoff is a hard stop at the surrender: "It does stop right after the war, and understanding Reconstruction is an important aspect of the war it misses."
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
