An engrossing, comprehensive examination of key Civil War river battles.
A military history book focuses on the Civil War campaigns on the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers.
In his characteristically detailed style, Zimmerman (Guide to Civil War Nashville, 2nd Ed., 2019, etc.) provides a thorough battle history of Union Navy gunboats and Confederate gunners and cavalry in eastern Missouri, middle-to-western Tennessee, and western Kentucky. The unique geography of this region made the military campaigns there different from anywhere else during the Civil War. In one of the only places where the Union extensively deployed its “brown-water navy,” military tacticians on both sides had “no gameplan to consult” as the “rules were created as the battles were fought.” Virtually no other site in the war pitted Union gunboats against Confederate cavalry and field artillery. Adding to the lore of the Tennessee and Cumberland campaigns was that they featured some of the most famous figures of the Confederacy, including Kentucky’s John Hunt Morgan and Tennessee’s Nathan Bedford Forrest, the first grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. In addition to their distinctiveness, the author argues that the conflicts along the Tennessee and Cumberland were critical to the ultimate success of the Union forces in the war. While most of the information in these pages has been covered by historians for a century, Zimmerman’s contribution is his ability to synthesize vast quantities of arcane military data into an accessible package. The book abounds with maps, fort schematics, charts, and photographs. It also features many well-placed insets with vignettes on particular weapons, people, and places. Civil War scholars may be perturbed by the lack of footnotes and references, though the volume does contain a bibliography that cites a number of academic books. General audiences and Civil War enthusiasts alike will be drawn to the work’s aesthetic appeal and ample use of visual aids. The volume concludes with a travel guide to the region’s battle sites that is particularly insightful, given the author’s active participation in numerous state and local Civil War preservation societies.
An engrossing, comprehensive examination of key Civil War river battles.Pub Date: Sept. 7, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-9858692-5-0-9
Page Count: 184
Publisher: ZIMCO Publications
Review Posted Online: Sept. 18, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
IN THE NEWS
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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