| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 95.2

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 95.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

The Civil War and the Limits of Destruction. By Mark E. Neely Jr. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007. 277 pp. $27.95, ISBN 978-0-674-02658-2.)

In a popular fable, a traveler feeds hungry villagers by putting a rock into a pot and convincing them all to contribute to a hearty "stone soup." In 1991, Mark E. Neely Jr. dropped a boulder into the Civil War cauldron when he asked: "Was the Civil War a total war?" Such questions often yield discussions about definitions rather than history, about absolutes instead of nuance. But the total war question has produced spirited debates about the true nature of the Civil War. In this slim volume Neely returns to that terrain, arguing that historians have exaggerated the destructiveness of the Civil War, accepting a sensationalized version of the conflict that distracts from a dispassionate understanding of the war's true meaning.

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