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The Whirlwind of War: Voices of the Storm, 1861-1865
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About The Whirlwind Of War: Voices Of The Storm, 1861-1865
Product Description The second book in the historian-author's trilogy continues his exhaustive, revisionist account of the Civil War years from a first person perspective, as he takes on the personas of eleven major players from the time period. Amazon.com Review The middle book in an anticipated trilogy, The Whirlwind of War is a unique study of the Civil War. Oates recounts the great struggle through a series of first-person monologues told in the voices of prominent figures such as Abraham Lincoln, Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, William Tecumseh Sherman, Mary Boykin Chestnut, Ulysses S. Grant, Frederick Douglass, John Wilkes Booth, and others. This original narrative technique brings a kind of freshness to an old and familiar story. It seems as if the characters speak directly to the reader; and Oates, an accomplished historian and biographer, is scrupulous about sticking as close to the historical record as he can. The book's one weakness is that it doesn't deliver a totally comprehensive telling of the Civil War despite its length of more than 700 pages. But the flip side is its strength: the way it helps readers understand the motives, perceptions, and behavior of the Civil War's most important actors. Sometimes it seems like there are too many books written on the Civil War. Oates nonetheless provides a welcome contribution to the field. --John Miller From Kirkus Reviews An epic but deeply flawed Civil War history (the second volume of a planned trilogy) suffers from the fictional techniques it employs, while benefiting little from that genre's potential narrative punch. As in his earlier volume, The Approaching Storm (1997), Oates uses invented dialogue, dramatic staging, and ``imaginative'' manipulation of facts in fashioning this nontraditional history of the cataclysmic war years. Characters range from major players like Lincoln, Grant, and Lee to small-timers like Cornelia Hancock, a young battlefield nurse. The results are uneven. Fiery Sherman, his legendary profanity liberated from the expurgation his own age demanded, is a masterpiece of revisionism. Jefferson Davis, whose florid, long-winded monologues read like a caricature of Victorian prose, is a melodramatic nightmare. Oateswho was a consultant in Ken Burns's televised Civil War series, but whose inspiration runs to Faulkner's multiple fictional viewpoints and the gimmicky segues of Robert Altman's filmsstrains to heighten the drama of America's most turbulent period to prove that differing attitudes (a chivalrous code of honor in the South, harsh pragmatism in the North) made the war's outcome inevitable. He pushes the envelope farther than Shelby Foote's sterling history, but with exponentially less effect. Curiously, Oates's fictionalization is less, not more, dramatic. The stoicism of generals desensitized to battlefield carnage, for example, or the fragmentation inherent in 11 different viewpoints (each with personal biases and blind spots) makes for flaccid narrative. The lack of tension is abetted by the absence of the historian's guiding hand, and the much-needed interpretive objectivity it provides. Nowhere is this more apparent than in Oates's putative scoop: John Wilkes Booth's assassination of Lincoln had the approval of the highest Confederate authorities, including Davis himself. Outside Booth's own fevered ranting, the tantalizing scenario is wholly unsupported by Oates's facts or fiction. An ambitious but disappointing history whose drama arises from the historical facts, not from its freehanded embellishment of them. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. Review "A realistic, engaging narrative." -- Omaha World-Herald "For the history buff who likes a good read...refreshing...enlightening." -- Philadelphia Inquirer "Oates does a masterful job of weaving the profound themes the country was struggling with at the time of the war." -- Buffalo News "Oates takes us to the center of the action while bre
