Evan’s Reviews > The Civil War: A Narrative, Vol. 3: Red River to Appomattox > Status Update

3 volumes, 3,000 pages, 1.2 million words, 240 hours. I've scaled and descended this Everest. Wow. Holy shit. What am I even going to say?

"Memory smoothed the crumpled scroll, abolished fear, leached pain and grief, and removed the sting from death." I'm losing it.

"The rebel yell... Wildcat screech, foxhunt yip, banshee squall, whatever it had been, it survived only in the fading memories and sometimes vivid dreams of old men sunning themselves on public benches, grouped together in resentment of the boredom they encountered when they
spoke of the war to those who had not shared it with them." Beautiful.

16 miles due east from my house Confederate guerilla raider William Quantrill with intent to kill Lincoln was shot by Union troops and died right here at hospital in this town at the end of the war. I didn't even know this! So much history!

My copy is 1188 pages, so I've already exceeded the stated page counts of all the editions listed. It's all parades now.

Lee is checkmated. It is over. And so, too, nearly, is my journey through this 3,000-page compulsively readable magnum opus.

Lincoln enters Richmond. Imagine being there.

Lincoln's horsetrading to get the 13th amendment abolishing slavery passed. The REAL Art of the Deal, Trumpian pipsqueaks.