Saturday, July 04, 2009
Happy 232nd, America
I'm not getting to this until the end of the day, but I hope you have a lovely Independence Day.
One great way to celebrate our nation's birthday is to read up on its history. Ta-Nehisi Coates recently discussed James McPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom on his blog recently, and I went out and got a copy. I would recommend it as a great single-volume history of the Civil War. It gets deep into the underlying assumptions and attitudes of people in those days, which makes it a bit more useful than the Shelby Foote and Bruce Catton histories which (good as they are ) tend to get absorbed in the minutiae of military tactics in specific battles.
