One of my favorite activities is finding out all the gaps in my high school education. I don’t know why I love doing this. It’s usually in a spirit of complaining about all the things Yorktown High School could have just done better. I have a lot of critiques of literally everything about my high school education.

One thing I never understood when I was in US history class was why we skipped learning about the actual wars the country was involved in. We’d study all the way up to the war and skip the war entirely, and move on to the aftermath of the war. Seriously. As 16-17-18 year olds, it made us so angry. The war was the interesting part.

Naturally we spent a lot of time leading up to the Civil War and then immediately skipped the Civil War and moved on to Reconstruction…

…which means I missed this whole thing about Sherman’s March to the Sea and exactly what it entailed. My mom was stunned when she mentioned it and I, having never studied the actual Civil War in any fashion, had no idea what she was talking about.

So when I saw Southern Storm: Sherman’s March to the Sea by Noah Andre Trudeau, I figured this might be a good opportunity to catch up on some history I wasn’t all that familiar with.

Well. It kinda worked.

I absorbed a lot of information about the strategy of the Union Army and what Sherman was doing. I ask again, since Sherman effectively conducted the campaign that won the Civil War for the Union, why wasn’t he put on the money?

What I didn’t learn was much of where Sherman went or when.

I listened to this book as an audiobook but I think I probably should have done it as a real book. I assume a real book would have some maps? I have no idea what the geography of Georgia or South Carolina is. I don’t know where the crucial rail lines were. I’m not familiar with the finer points of the terrain down there. The significance of long descriptions of military tactics, movements, and actions that cut off Georgia and South Carolina from the rest of the Confederacy were all lost on me.

It was an interesting book, I think someone getting into Civil War history would really like it. I think someone reading the book would really like it. I don’t recommend the audiobook for beginners though. It was just too hard for me to follow without also checking out a visual guide.

Tagged: authors: noah andre trudeau, books: southern storm, genre: history, genre: non-fiction