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3.0 

Simply Murder

By Chris Mackowski & Kristopher D. White
Simply Murder by Chris Mackowski & Kristopher D. White digital book - Fable

Publisher Description

This Civil War history and guide offers a vivid chronicle of this dramatic yet misunderstood battle, plus invaluable information for battlefield visitors.

The battle of Fredericksburg is usually remembered as the most lopsided Union defeat of the Civil War. It is sometimes called “Burnside’s folly,” after Union commander Maj. Gen. Ambrose Burnside who led the Army of the Potomac to ruin along the banks of the Rappahannock River. Confederates, fortified behind a stone wall along a sunken road, poured a hail of lead into them as they charged. One eyewitness summed it up saying, “it is only murder now.”

But the battle remains one of the most misunderstood and misremembered engagements of the war. Burnside started with a well-conceived plan and had every reason to expect victory. How did it go so terribly wrong?

Authors Chris Mackowski and Kristopher D. White have worked for years along Fredericksburg’s Sunken Road and Stone Wall, and they’ve escorted thousands of visitors across the battlefield. Simply Murder not only recounts Fredericksburg’s tragic story of slaughter, but includes vital information about the battlefield itself and the insights they’ve learned from years of walking the ground.

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1 Review

3.0
“The authors, who write for the Emerging Civil War blog ( http://www.emergingcivilwar.com ), have provided a short but respectable account of the Battle of Fredericksburg. They do a good job of conveying the importance of Franklin’s (Meade’s) oft neglected southern attack. In addition to the battle narrative, the book also includes a physical description of important battlefield location, both at the time of the battle and today. By providing directions to tour sites, including their GPS coordinates, the authors have made this a valuable book to bring to the battlefield. I read the Kindle version of the book and unsurprisingly found a enough typos to be noticeable, of course these are not the fault of the authors. This book works well as an introduction to the battle and includes a list of books for further reading. Those more knowledgeable about the battle or the Civil War in general may find this book somewhat lacking in detail as well as in footnotes.”

About Chris Mackowski

Chris Mackowski, Ph.D., is the editor-in-chief and co-founder of the online resource Emerging Civil War. A writing professor in the Jandoli School of Communication at St. Bonaventure University in Allegany, NY, Chris is also historian-in-residence at Stevenson Ridge, a historic property on the Spotsylvania battlefield in central Virginia. The series editor of the award-winning Emerging Civil War Series, he has authored or co-authored a dozen books on the Civil War, and his articles have appeared in major Civil War magazines.

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