Stephen W. SearsCritiques

A concise review of the carrier's decisive role in replacing the battleship as the deciding factor in naval warfare during the Pacific war… account of the aircraft carrier and its use by both Japan and the United States… concentrates on the Navy version and specifically the sailors and pilots assigned or attached to naval vessels.


Excellent recounting of Battle of Antietam

Good detailed account of CW campaign

Yes, i like it. Yes, it is a well paced narrative of the story of McClellan's failed foray down to Richmond in 1862. Well told, generally fair. But.... and this will be a general comment because it does sort of drive me crazy in countless civil war books, but this books sort of epitomizes the bias of extolling Lee at the expense of all else. Throughout the Peninsula campaign, Lee barely triumphs- often due to McClellan's cautious bungling and misjudgments. But... it is never Lee's fault that things go wrong... it is always his people who don't write his orders down correctly or commanders practically willfully misreading his supposed intent. Never is it Lee... bungling. And yet... for McClellan and well, for everyone else (south included) they are simply "wrong" (or - though the author doesn't use these words: stupid, lazy, cowardly, slow, etc). As i mention this courses though these civil war histories - even supposedly objective (non south leaning, like this one) is suffused with this Lee worship. But when he isn't clear with orders and doesn't have the alignment right and the battle fails... isn't that his fault (as it would be if it were McClellan or anyone else)?

Ten fascinating essays on command issues in the Army of the Potomac, by Stephen Sears. Sears is not only an expert on that army, but a thorough historian capable of excellent prose. Some of his statements against McClellan are now being challenged, but he still commands a deep knowledge of the intricacies of that army’s commanders. I most enjoyed his essay on Joe Hooker, which debunked many myths about that underrated general.

Incredible book. The way Sears paints the picture, the battlefield comes to life. I've been to Gettysburg multiple times, and I could visualize the entire battle as I was reading.

This is a difficult book for me to evaluate. I was prejudiced when I picked it up. My only purpose in reading it was out of a sense of duty.
The sub-title, "The Young Napoleon" is one of the greater misnomers of all time. He might have seen himself this way but he was far from it. It is inarguable that he was a superb organizer and even trainer but there any comparison with Napoleon ceases. Was McClellan afraid to fight his army? Clearly, he was nearly utterly unwilling to utter the command "GO." He always saw his opponent as vastly outnumbering his forces and he spent a lot of time demanding re-enforcements. He did fight one of the bloodiest battles of the Civil War at Antietam but he does not seem to have been hugely troubled by the loss of life so he could take the view of a general who realized battles cannot be fought without loss of life. Some historians believe that he could have ended the war at Antietam had he been bolder. We'll never know.
As a person, McClellan seems to have been an incredible dunderhead believing himself to be better than any with whom he had to do business.

Wow. Thirty-two hours. Well, it's quite a tome--at nearly 900 pages in the hardback version. And, you know, even though I was lucky to receive the audiobook version via LibraryThing Early Reviewers, I wish I'd received a print book instead. The reason is simply that history--with its names, dates, places, chronologies, geographies (I imagine the print book might include maps), and the like--is difficult to listen to *if* what's being read aloud was written to be read on the page. I tried to listen to this book--which, as far as I can tell, is masterful--while driving, and that just won't work. For me, at least. I'd need to be doing nothing else but listening; but then, why sink 32 hours into this project when I could just read the text myself in less time? So I'm sorry I'm questioning the entire enterprise of the audiobook in this review, since I'm sure audiobooks are valuable to many individuals. I'd love to sit down with a print version of this book, though, since I'm sure I'd process--and retain--much more of the message that way.

An excellent read - though I wouldn't recommend listening to it on audio if you are not familiar with the geography of Antietam, Harper's Ferry, and environs.

There are few generals of the Civil War as controversial as George Brinton McClellan. His command of the Army of the Potomac during the early years of the Civil War generated a storm of criticism and sparked debates still being waged by historians today. Drawing heavily on McClellan’s letters and other documents, Stephen Sears offers a convincing assessment of McClellan and his military career, one that places him squarely in the ranks of McClellan’s critics. His biography of the general reveals McClellan to have been a man with many gifts, of which he was perhaps too well aware. His outsized self-regard generated constant disputes with his superiors, as he saw what was often reasonable arguments as driven by implacable opponents determined to destroy him.

These tendencies were only magnified by the pressures of the command. Had McClellan been as successful as his prewar reputation promised little may have come of this, but his Peninsula campaign was hobbled by "Little Mac"'s insistence on caution, one magnified by a continual fear that he faced an enemy superior in numbers. As a result, he was continually outfoxed by his opponents, making his "Young Napoleon" label (the source of the book's subtitle) ironic rather than accurate. Such was his stature, though, that even after his dismissal he was well-regarded enough to be selected as the Democratic Party's presidential candidate in their losing 1864 campaign.

Sears's focus in this book is on McClellan's Civil War service, as he spends only four of the book’s seventeen chapters on McClellan's life before and after the conflict that defined his historical legacy. Though regrettable in some respects, it is an understandable decision to focus on the years in which he made his greatest historical impact and which continues to generate debate even today. In the end, though, it makes for a sad tale of a man who, for all of his gifts, ultimately came to be defined by his limitations.

Odds are, if you know Stephen W. Sears, it's for his important books on the Civil War, such as Landscape Turned Red about the Battle of Antietam. This earlier writing is so different that it's hard even to say that it belongs to the same genre.

This is a tiny little book -- 164 pages in my copy, in quite large type. There are no footnotes, there is no index, there are few reader helps of any kind. Want to learn about, say, the siege of Tobruk? There isn't much you can do except read the whole book -- which, to be sure, won't take you especially long. I got through it in a few hours.

So you won't be able to use this for any sort of serious research about World War II; the data isn't there and the source information isn't there. All that said -- if you want a quick, breezy overview of World War II in North Africa, this isn't a bad book. It reads well (if anything, better than Sears's later works, perhaps because he isn't trying to be scholarly), and while there were one or two points where he seemed to go against historical consensus, the book seems for the most part to be accurate. A bagatelle, but a least a fairly pleasant one.½

Excellent book about the Army of the Potomac. I must admit that I did not anticipate how difficult this would be to listen to. The reading is excellent, but I really needed maps and other supplemental materials to help me understand and visualize what was going on. Pictures of the people involved would have helped, too. I also recommend that you read an overall book about the American Civil War before you read/listen to this. Great book, but I will read it rather than listen to it next time.

Incredible detail...a pretty good read

Following the Battle of Fredericksburg in Dec. of 1862, the Army of the Potomac was demoralized. It was not just the heavy casualties sustained in a frontal assault on a well-placed enemy, but it was also the poor food that the army was given to subsist on afterwards — “an unvarying diet of hardtack, salt pork, and black coffee. This diet was bad enough for men who were well; for anyone with dysentery or typhoid it could kill.” Eventually, after a second attempt on the Confederates floundered to a halt in the infamous “Mud March”, the Union commander, Ambrose Burnside (who had tried to turn down command of the army on the grounds that he wasn’t capable of it), was replaced — by Joseph Hooker, the very man who he had tried to keep from army command by taking it himself.

Hooker was a man of slightly unsavory reputation in his personal life, but he was renowned as a fighter. Moreover, he turned around the army’s supply situation. Finally, he put together a plan that, he felt, was capable of defeating the masterful Lee. He would not attack Lee, but rather, maneuvering around the Army of Northern Virginia’s left flank, he would allow himself to be attacked, or force Lee into retreat. Unfortunately, this left the initiative to Lee.

Hooker’s plan went smoothly for several days, but on May 2nd, 1863, things went disastrously wrong. One of his corps commanders, Daniel Sickles, caught a glimpse of the Confederates and concluded that they were retreating. They were not. What he had seen was General Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson moving his corps across the front to a position on the Army of the Potomac’s right flank. That flank was held by Oliver Otis Howard’s XI Corps. It was situated where it was precisely because the right flank was considered to be unlikely to be attacked. In addition, Howard deliberately disregarded orders from Hooker to refuse his flank on the off chance that the Confederates might, after all, attack him. As a result, the Union right was dangling in the air when Jackson struck; the XI corps was sent flying from one flank of the Army of the Potomac to the other. However, Jackson was killed by friendly fire that evening, and the Union army still had plenty of fight left in it.

The next day, however, the situation of the army became rather more serious. The Confederates occupied a strong artillery position at Hazel Grove and blasted the Union positions. Hooker himself was concussed when a pillar of the Chancellor house against which he was leanding was hit by a Confederate shell. Meanwhile, on the opposite flank, Sedgwick’s Union VI Corps, temporarily successful at Fredericksburg, found itself surrounded by the Confederates. Additionally, most of the Union cavalry, under General Stoneman, had raided into the Confederate rear, but had not taken — had not even attempted to take — Hanover Junction, the key rebel supply depot in Lee’s rear. Finally, Hooker withdrew his army over the Rappahannock on the night before the Confederates were about to assault his lines once more, an assault that might very well have led to a Southern disaster. The Union lost the battle, but Confederate losses were unacceptably high.

Sears’ book is a splendid account of the Battle of Chancellorsville, highly recommended,

This book about the Army of the Potomac’s high command — its own commanders, its corps commanders, division commanders, brigade commanders — is generally excellent. I have only two complaints. One is with the maps. While fairly numerous, they do not show unit positions, making it sometimes difficult to follow the action described in the text. The second is with the balance of the book in terms of time. Five sevenths of the book is devoted to the first half of the war, while only two sevenths is devoted to the second half. Of that second half, incidentally, one takeaway is that Grant frequently undermined his own operations by his own impatience, demanding that operations get under way without allowing sufficient time for preparations. On the other hand, it was well known to the troops in the field that the Confederates could be allowed at most a few hours to occupy their chosen ground before they had dug the most formidable entrenchments.½

While I'm giving this book four stars if I could give it three & three-quarters that would be about right, as while there is nothing else quite like it in terms of following the twists and turns of how Union's main field force in Virginia evolved over time, and I'm inclined to trust Sears' judgement on military matters, I'm not so sure in regards to the flying of sparks when political and military matters clashed. To put it another way, while Secretary of War Edwin Stanton and the congressional Committee on the Conduct of the War might not be the most attractive people in the world, it's understandable why at the time there would be chronic distrust of an officer corps dominated by conservative Democrats. To cut to the chase Sears gives fellow historian William Marvel as his first acknowledgment and my impression of Marvel's biography of Stanton was that it was a caricature of the man; and it's not as though I hold any particular brief for Stanton. With that in mind though this work does serve well as a good overview of the war in the east.

Robert E. Lee's overly ambitious tactics, poorly drafted orders, and the Army of Northern Virginia's sloppy execution of his battle plans, are highlighted in Stephen W. Sears's history of the Peninsula Campaign in "To the Gates of Richmond." The problems which plagued Lee's army are compared with the arrogant bombasts and cowering timidity of "the young Napoleon," Gen. George B. McClellan. The author recounts McClellan's masterful strategy of making an amphibious landing on the lower Virginia peninsula, slowly and seemingly inexoribly advancing up that peninsula until his army was close enough to Richmond to hear the church bells and shows how Lee's ambitious and aggressive attacks caused McClellan to lose all nerve and to "snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Relying on personal accounts of both common soldiers and ranking officers, Sears illustrates the hapless incompetence of both armies in this early campaign, the largest in terms of numbers of troops that would occur during the Civil War. History tells us that the Army of Northern Virginia and its legendary campaign would learn from their mistakes and improve, while McClellan would not and would be cast aside by Lincoln and history. Sears is a gifted author and this is an excellent and balanced account of an important seminal campaign of the American Civil War.

The book Lincoln's Lieutenant by Stephen W Sears narrated by George Guidall was an audiobook on CD I received from LibraryThing as an early review. Let me start by stating it can be quite overwhelming to see 26 compact discs in total on one book. On average one should finish listening to the cd's in 32 hours give or take an hour or two, but it took me a little more time due to interruptions. A well-researched and written book I found it very interesting and informative. An interesting fact that surprised me was so much leaking of information to the newspapers. Also, the general‘s writing their dissatisfaction to members of the Congress and Governors about the war. Author Sears gives a fascinating looking at the military campaign of the northern army with President Lincoln making the strategic decisions, while the Secretary of War Edwin McMasters Stanton was doing everything in his power to oppose them. Also, most if not all of the general's were only being appointed because of the people they knew, not by their military experience making for little knowledge on the battlefield. Stephen Sears gives authentically long-lasting historical accuracy of the Civil War struggle, and I would highly recommend for anyone interested in this subject.

So, an award-winning American Civil War historian collects a number of eyewitness accounts from American participants in World War II. Emphasis is on individual, personal accounts, ranging from high-ranking generals and admirals, down through the ranks, all the way to one civilian assigned to a military unit as an interpreter/investigator. Both European and Pacific theaters are well covered, and all military branches. Given the military thread, one might be tempted to compare this to a box of chocolates, where you really never know what you're going to find next. Unfortunately, the level of word craft fluctuates enough in quality from one eyewitness to the next, that this may be better described as a community bake sale, where you not only get sweet and savory morsels worth your attention, but also a few rather bland and slightly burnt offerings. Remarkably, the least coherent reporting came from a military newspaper reporter. Others performed better, if a bit stiff and dry at times, especially officers, who seemed to shift too closely at times toward old habits of submitting official reports, instead of just telling their stories. All in all, this is a decent addendum to broader histories on the subject.

The best single volume history of Gettysburg out there!

The best single volume history of Gettysburg out there!

Lincoln's Lieutenants is the longest audio book I've listened to, and one that is well worth the time involved. I generally prefer reading books on paper, but having already read extensively about the Civil War, I found Stephen Sears' audio book well thought out and paced so that I could listen continuously without feeling the need for backtracking. I was a little surprised that the volume was not accompanied by any paper inserts at all. I would have liked an index to the discs, maybe a table of contents, and a map or two. I received this book through Library Thing Early Reviewer program and am very pleased to have had the opportunity to read it.

Thick tomes relating in great detail the history of the American Civil War or even the Army of the Potomac are not hard to come by. There have been enough published to fill a good-sized library. So what makes Stephen W. Sears’ history of ‘Lincoln’s Lieutenants’ unique? After spending 32 hours listening to an audio recording of this excellent book, I can safely say that it is all in the perspective. If you were to describe a tree trunk you wouldn’t have too much difficulty. You would describe its width, its color, its texture. Is it straight or crooked? Is it easy to climb? But if you were to move up into the tree, the task of describing each of its hundreds and then thousands of branches becomes daunting. Many people would be tempted to say they were all similar. But that would not be entirely true.

So it is with the task that Sears undertook. Before George Meade took over command of the Army of the Potomac in 1863, shortly before Gettysburg, the position was held by six other officers, all of whom found the much smaller, ill-equipped Army of Northern Virginia more than they could handle. One would think that with an army of a hundred thousand soldiers it would be a simple matter to march on and seize Richmond, but one would be wrong. An army is made up of several corps. Each corps is made up of several divisions which are, made up of several regiments which are, in turn made up of brigades. Each of these units needed a commander and the sad truth was that Lincoln’s army suffered from a severe lack of experienced officers. The pre-war standing army was a fraction of the size of what was needed and the majority of the qualified officers came from the southern states with their almost feudal agrarian society that left younger sons little opportunities other than the military.

Sears does an excellent job of describing how these many sub-commanders worked together, or didn’t, and how their actions contributed to or detracted from the war effort. Few had any military experience. Many were politicians with typical politician’s shortcomings. Some were vain, petty, ignorant, venial and just plain despicable. Others, though, found themselves in a challenging position and rose to the occasion.

Sears’ book was ably narrated by the incomparable George Guidall. Unfortunately, I have come to the conclusion that audio recordings are not the best medium for most nonfiction books. Often when reading a nonfiction book, I like to highlight certain passages and refer back to them in the future. This is not convenient in audio. Also, I would like to how characters names are spelled so that I can do further research on them. Finally, many nonfiction books include photographs and maps of the subjects that missing from an audio recording. I must give cudos to the great folks at Recorded Books though. When I discovered that two of the 26 discs in this book were blank, they quickly sent me replacements and they were in my mailbox within a week.

*Quotations are cited from an advanced reading copy and may not be the same as appears in the final published edition. The review was based on an advanced reading copy obtained at no cost from the publisher in exchange for an unbiased review. While this does take any ‘not worth what I paid for it’ statements out of my review, it otherwise has no impact on the content of my review.

FYI: On a 5-point scale I assign stars based on my assessment of what the book needs in the way of improvements:
*5 Stars – Nothing at all. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
*4 Stars – It could stand for a few tweaks here and there but it’s pretty good as it is.
*3 Stars – A solid C grade. Some serious rewriting would be needed in order for this book to be considered great or memorable.
*2 Stars – This book needs a lot of work. A good start would be to change the plot, the character development, the writing style and the ending.
*1 Star - The only thing that would improve this book is a good bonfire.

This is a great book but I could not take it with me when traveling as it was too large. Especially good if you are from the North.

This is a great book covering the major players in the Union Army. I listened to the audio edition which consists of 26 disks. The work and the reading remained consistent from start to finish. George Guidall does a great job of narration and is easy to listen to. He Stephen Sears work to life. Sears presents a logical and follow able history of the stream of command in the Union Army. Centering initially around George McClellan and leading to the final solution in U. S. Grant. The men that these men commanded were pretty much a self seeking bunch of junior and senior officers all clawing to make it to the next step up. It would be interesting to see what the Confederate Army was like. The beauty of this book is that it was written at a personal level. Letters, diaries and journals expose the thoughts and motives of these officers and tells their stories personally while weaving in the broader scope of the war. Interaction with President Lincoln both the good and the bad is presented as well. I especially enjoyed the first chapters the laid the backdrop for the war. There are a number of stories and facts that are presented that I knew nothing about.....for example, Union Soldiers in the Washington D.C. area were ordered to round up run away slaves and return them to their owners. General Porters long drawn out fight to regain his honor after he was used as a scapegoat for another officer's advancement. I also enjoyed the epilogue which presented the lives of all these officers after the war was over......what an interesting ending to a very well researched and presented book!