This anthology of eyewitness accounts of the first few months of the War Between the States is a partial success. It does a good job of collecting combat narratives from both journalists and soldiers, though the former are marred by the purple prose favored by the press of the day. However, the book ultimately is unsatisfying because of its perfunctory treatment of the politics of secession--the Congresses and both Presidents are barely mentioned, and the Peace Convention not at all--and the fact that the worm's-eye-view his eyewitnesses offer of the battles are insufficient to describe how the battle as a whole was proceeding. Together with the book's great length and the poor editorial decision to not block out the quotations, including a standard location to identify who is narrating, the book is less than enjoyable reading and far from definitive on an intrinsically intriguing subject. ( )