For those who enjoy the Civil War, this is a must read! I loved the information presented, and how it was laid out in an easy to read format!
Perfect for the history lover in your life, and a much different perspective on the Civil War.

An interesting and intriguing book that gives us a glimpse on war and its impact. It's definitely an worthwhile read.

I had much higher expectations than were actually presented by this book. Rather than a a well crafted disertaion on how the things of warfare impact the prosecution of that warfare I found a steady stream of short anecdotal situations presented as in depth research. I did not read the results of any new research. As a Civil War historian this was a complete waste of time.

An amazing book about the true cost of war. The impact on the people and how that impact changed the outcome of the civil war and the nation.

Although this will be of great interest to environmental historians, as Cashin gets into the vast deforestation of the Civil War zone of conflict, and the loss of local spatial and landscape orientation from destruction and land clearance, the real gems are in cataloging the social breakdown in southern networks of favors, local status and possessions. Cashin is careful to lay out bad behavior on both sides, but for southern civilians, the speed with which idealization of their men in uniform turned to horror as they either took things out of necessity or entitlement (and there's a streak of revenge in the "rich man's war/poor man's fight" when the poor man can seize your stuff and butcher your pig), and confronted that they were fighting a war for property rights and social hierarchy that their own government couldn't compel the Confederate army to respect. What deserves a huge follow-up is the pattern in which, with great speed, all of this was transmuted back into "our brave warriors" and all damage blamed on evil yankees.