Dando-Collins juggles disparate elements to maintain cohesion in a convoluted history of military campaigns, changes in...
Absorbing tale of a conflict in 19th-century Central America sparked by two men with rather different ideas about Manifest Destiny.
Australian historian Dando-Collins (Blood of the Caesars: How the Murder of Germanicus Led to the Fall of Rome, 2008, etc.) has written what in some measure qualifies as a dual biography of William Walker and Cornelius Vanderbilt, focusing on the circumstances that made them enemies and ended in Walker’s violent death at age 36. When the book opens in 1849, Vanderbilt, who rose from poverty to become perhaps the wealthiest person in the United States, was 55 years old. He was determined to control shipping routes between America’s East and West coasts, which would include winning transit rights across such Central American nations as Nicaragua and Panama. An 1849 meeting with U.S. Secretary of State John M. Clayton seemed to assure Vanderbilt the exclusive right to negotiate with the Nicaraguan government to build a canal there. None of the negotiators, however, foresaw the entrance of William Walker to rewrite their cozy scenario. Reared in Nashville, Tenn., Walker learned Greek and Latin by age 12, attended universities in the United States and Europe, earned degrees in medicine and law, then worked in New Orleans as a crusading journalist. Through a series of unlikely circumstances, the fearless Walker became an adventurer determined to spread North American influence throughout Central America. He arrived in Nicaragua in 1855 at the head of a group of mercenaries he had hired and trained; in 1856, he became the civil war–torn nation’s president. When he began interfering with Vanderbilt’s business plans, the tycoon decided to fight Walker with competing mercenaries. Four bloody years later, Vanderbilt had prevailed, and Walker died in front of a Honduran firing squad.
Dando-Collins juggles disparate elements to maintain cohesion in a convoluted history of military campaigns, changes in governments, complicated business transactions and bizarre backdoor diplomatic dealings.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-306-81607-9
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Da Capo
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2008
The Civil War's western theater is the focus of this vivid history by the author of Forrest Gump (1986). A southerner whose great-grandfather was involved in the events depicted, Groom focuses on the Confederate side of the conflict and the rebels' last great offensive push to drive Federal forces from their soil. The center of the story is Southern general John Bell Hood. A flamboyant and aggressive leader, Hood fought at Antietam and Gettysburg, lost a leg at Chickamauga, and was for a time presumed dead, but he went on to become a lieutenant general. When Sherman, on his march to the sea, ordered the expulsion of the populace from Atlanta, Hood fired off a searing series of letters to his former colleague, challenging Sherman to fight and declaring that it was better to ``die a thousand deaths'' than to live under Yankee tyranny. Abandoning the defensive posture of his predecessor in command of Georgia, he vigorously attacked Sherman but was repulsed and forced to retire to Atlanta. Hood again suffered defeat at Franklin, Tenn., where he was so moved by the carnage that he broke down and wept, but he kept on coming. He moved on Nashville in a last desperate flourish, but on December 16, 1864, his forces were routed by Union troops under General George Thomas. At his own request, Hood was then relieved of his command. Five days later, Sherman captured Savannah, and the last gasp of Southern offensive was over. With the skill of a mature novelist and an eye for detail, Groom manages to imbue Hood's futile and awful efforts with the dignity and nobility of medieval chivalry. Highly readable and intensely evocative, a fine addition to the growing body of literature about the western war, once largely a forgotten footnote to the ``real'' action in the East. (photos, maps, not seen) (First printing of 40,000; $50,000 ad/promo; author tour)
Pub Date: April 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-87113-591-4
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1995
A well-researched and original, if somewhat overwrought, history of Napoleon's fall from power, from his return from Moscow to his death in 1821 on the island of St. Helena. Hamilton-Williams (Waterloo: New Perspectives, not reviewed) has delved deeply into the military and diplomatic history of the last three years of Napoleon's reign and into the machinations of Talleyrand, his longtime foreign minister, and FouchÇ, his chief of police, both of whom played critical roles in his fall. The author's thesis is that the fall was brought about not by military failure, even at Waterloo, but by a series of carefully orchestrated betrayals. He argues that but for these Napoleon would have been able to defeat the divided allies in 1814, before his exile to Elba; and indeed the former emperor's popularity in France was such that, landing 11 months later with 1,100 men, it took only 20 days for him to retake France without casualties. Hamilton- Williams undercuts his argument that the allies should have accepted Napoleon's protestations of peace by noting that ``if he, Napoleon, could beat Wellington and Blucher...all that had been lost since 1812 might be regained.'' He also neglects the possibility that the Allies, after more than a decade of war, might have viewed Napoleon's overtures with some skepticism. The author's villains are the Bourbons, in particular the heir to the French throne, the comte d'Artois, whose intelligence organization committed a number of assassinations, including poisoning Napoleon himself (for which the evidence is indeed persuasive); and the British government, a ``contemptible clique,'' and its foreign minister, Castlereagh. Hamilton-Williams tells a stirring story, revealing much new material, but his partisanship is such that even Julius Caesar receives a whiff of grapeshot for setting his ``defiling foot'' on French soil. The illustrations, however, are outstanding.
Pub Date: March 15, 1995
ISBN: 0-471-11862-1
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Wiley
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1995
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