PAGES:

▼

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

George Thomas bios

Isn't this how it often happens...the Civil War community long laments the lack of a modern biography of a major Civil War figure, then suddenly three appear at roughly the same moment [well, in the publishing world's timetable, I consider within 18 months the 'same time'!].

Christopher J. Einolf had the good fortune to make it out of the gate first, with his well reviewed (but unfortunately still unread by me) Univ. of Oklahoma Press book George Thomas: Virginian for the Union(Nov. 2007).

Up next, by the first half of next year, we'll see:

Master of War: The Life of General George H. Thomas by Benson Bobrick (Simon & Schuster, Feb. 2009).

General George H. Thomas: A Biography of the Union’s “Rock of Chickamauga” by Robert P. Broadwater (McFarland, Spring/Summer 09).

Taking reviews of prior work into consideration, I don't hold out a great deal of hope for the last. I've never heard of Mr. Bobrick before, but a quick Amazon search comes up with quite a range of subjects (many well-received) from this very prolific author.

5 comments:

  1. AnonymousNovember 19, 2008 at 8:33 AM

    Nice to see Thomas get some modern coverage. Now if we could only get the same for William S. Rosecrans...

    Mike Peters

    ReplyDelete
  2. DW@CWBANovember 19, 2008 at 8:51 AM

    No kidding. Isn't the most recent one still Lamers's (first published in 1961)?

    ReplyDelete
  3. AnonymousNovember 19, 2008 at 11:49 AM

    Thanks for highlighting these, Drew. Bobrick is a very wide-ranging historian who has published on everything from Siberia to the Bible. I read his book on the American Revolution some years ago and enjoyed it.

    Does this mean we'll next have a deluge of books on Joe Hooker?

    ReplyDelete
  4. DW@CWBANovember 19, 2008 at 12:58 PM

    I'm hoping for Samuel R. Curtis, but not holding my breath for it!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Eric WittenbergNovember 19, 2008 at 5:12 PM

    Expect Broadwater's book to be God-awful. All of his others have been, so there's no reason to expect this to be any better.

    Eric

    ReplyDelete

***PLEASE READ BEFORE COMMENTING***: You must SIGN YOUR NAME when submitting your comment. In order to maintain civil discourse and ease moderating duties, anonymous comments will be deleted. Comments containing outside promotions and/or product links will also be removed. Thank you for your cooperation.