Correy’s typefaces and design resonate the antique period. In this volume, the publisher, HarperCollins, deserves kudos for going the extra mile. Grossman replied the “essential process of reconsideration and re-evaluation takes place in all disciplines.” Example: the physician who ignores “‘revisionist’ medical research” has fools for patients, maybe dead fools. The head of the American Historical Association made that point recently, recalling Victorian apologists who deemed slavery benign and reprising Hiawathan eulogies about the myth of the “vanishing indian” - this in response to some public officials’ complaints that the College Board revised its syllabus for exams. In this, she proves the basic purpose of history, which is to illuminate the past for one’s time, a process that properly plows well-tilled ground anew when needed. Abbott cast her research net wide to compose an original narrative (four of them, really).

(Library of Congress catalogers added commas in the copyright information.)īorrowing a wealth of material from disparate works is not plagiarism, especially when weaving a new composite as compelling as this and as aptly aimed at today’s audience. Her gift for adaptation is clear in her title, a steal of John le Carre’s “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy,” which she apes down to its lack of serial punctuation. Her few-hundred sources include Drew Gilpin Faust’s landmark “This Republic of Suffering” (reviewed here in 2008), summarizing just one of its theses in a single paragraph and never citing it again. She scanned everything from Emma Edmondson’s pension file to Shelby Foote’s three-volume classic, “The Civil War,” touching every base in passing and gleaning at least a grain from every field. Abbott’s high achievement lies in her Augean compilation of published and archival material her 13-page bibliography embraces the entire conflict.

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