Why read Belligerent Muse?

Book cover of Belligerent Muse: Five Northern Writers and How They Shaped Our Understanding of the Civil War

Book description

War destroys, but it also inspires, stimulates, and creates. It is, in this way, a muse, and a powerful one at that. The American Civil War was a particularly prolific muse--unleashing with its violent realities a torrent of language, from soldiers' intimate letters and diaries to everyday newspaper accounts, great…

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American history

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Why read it?

1 author picked Belligerent Muse as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Candice Shy Hooper

Author

If Marszalek’s book is thin on any aspect of Sherman it is on his writing — the eloquent, powerful weapon he brandished during the war and the efficient, versatile tool with which he constructed his legacy in his Memoirs.

As a young man, the letters he wrote to his foster sister and future wife Ellen contained carefully constructed sentences with descriptive flourishes; as an adult, he borrowed liberally from his love of Shakespeare and the theater to craft his persona in his Memoirs.

Cushman, an award-winning poet and historian, places Sherman’s writing in the context of four other Northern writers…

From Candice's list on The best books on William Tecumseh Sherman.