For the past half century, John Keegan, the greatest military historian of our time, has been returning to the scenes of America's most bloody and wrenching war to ponder its lingering conundrums: the continuation of fighting for four years between such vastly mismatched sides; the dogged persistence of ill-trained, ill-equipped, and often malnourished combatants; the effective absence of decisive battles among some two to three hundred known to us by name. Now Keegan examines these and other puzzles with a peerless understanding of warfare, uncovering dimensions of the conflict that have eluded earlier historiography. While offering original and perceptive insights into psychology, ideology, demographics, and economics, Keegan reveals the war's hidden shape-a consequence of leadership, the evolution of strategic logic, and, above all, geography, the Rosetta Stone of his legendary decipherments of all great battles. The American topography, Keegan argues, presented a battle space of complexity and challenges virtually unmatched before or since. Out of a succession of mythic but chaotic engagements, he weaves an irresistible narrative illuminated with comparisons to the Napoleonic Wars, the First World War, and other conflicts. .

Originally published: London : Hutchinson, 2009. Includes maps of: American Civil War, 1861-65; American Railroads in 1861; First Battle of Bull Run (Manassas); Shiloh 6 April 1862; Shiloh 7 April 1862; Seven Days' Battles June 25-July 1, 1962; Antietam 17 September 1862;Chancellorsville May 2-6, 1963; Convergence of Forces in the North; Gettysburg 1 July 1865; Gettysburg 2 July 1863; Gettysburg 3 July 1863.

North and South divide -- Will there be a war? -- Improvised armies -- Running the war -- The military geography of the Civil War -- The life of the soldier -- Plans -- McClellan takes command -- The war in middle America -- Lee's war in the East, Grant's war in the West -- Chancellorsville & Gettysburg -- Vicksburg -- Cutting the Chattanooga-Atlantic link -- The overland campaign & the fall of Richmond -- Breaking into the South -- The battle off Cherbourg & the Civil War at sea -- Black soldiers -- The home fronts -- Walt Whitman and wounds -- Civil War generalship -- Civil War battle -- Could the South have survived? -- The end of the war.