Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/News/December 2021/Book reviews




 * By Nick-D

This book in Osprey's 'Campaign' series covers the 1864 Franklin–Nashville campaign that formed a prominent part of the final stage of the American Civil War. The book was written by Osprey regular Mark Lardas, who appears to cover a wide range of topics for the company.

This book is a good example of a mediocre Osprey work. It covers its topic competently, but without much passion or expertise on the part of the author. The book competently describes the background to the campaign (albeit rather repetitively) and the course of the fighting but feels a bit less than the sum of its parts. The Franklin-Nashville campaign was a total fiasco for the Confederates, but the rather colourless prose doesn't really help readers to appreciate this. Unusually for an Osprey work, the maps aren't particularly good and it's somewhat under-illustrated.

On the positive side, Lardas provides an interesting account of the Union Army. He convincingly argues that the Union forces left behind by Sherman during his march to the sea were, on the whole, highly competent units. The coverage of the African American units is particularly interesting - for instance, I learned that they tended to be better armed and led than white units as their officers were hand picked by the war office rather than elected and they were issued with the latest weapons. Not surprisingly, they fought well in this campaign. The coverage of the Confederate Army is rather brief in comparison, unfortunately, and doesn't convincingly describe the condition it was in.

Overall, this is a useful introduction to this campaign. However, there have to be better works on the topic.

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Various works