#bruce catton

[macrolit]

Literary history that happened on 9 October

[dadsinsuits]

Bruce Catton

[chaotic-archaeologist]

That moment when you're watching a TV show and get twitchy because they show Bruce Catton 's centennial history of the Civil War trilogy in the wrong order on the shelf... I'm such a fucking nerd

[unencumberedbylogic]

“America would cease to have room for things like an empty wilderness at the Soo, with sailors lounging by campfires in lazy waiting, with Indians netting fish from a flashing river while ripe berries simmered in the iron kettles at the edge of a silent forest, the timeless emptiness of unclaimed land and unfretted leisure running beyond vision in every direction. It would have no room, either, for a feudal plantation economy below the Ohio, veneered with chivalry and thin romance and living in an outworn dream, or for the peculiar institution by which that economy lived, or for the hot pride and the wild impossible visions that grew out of it. The old ways were going, an overpowering compulsive force was being generated, and the long trails of smoke that lay on the curving blue horizon of Lake Huron were the signs of it.”

- Bruce Catton, This Hallowed Ground (Doubleday, 1955)

I read this one summer long ago, the first book on the American Civil War I had read. This passage always stayed with me, perhaps helped shape my study of history. We don’t write history like this any longer, but Catton’s prose captured a child’s imagination, let him look however dimly into those moments of the past, to feel the fear and excitement of changing times that drove the extremes of American actions and reactions. It made that war seem an irrepressible conflict not because of the stakes or the cultures that had created the sectional issues, but because the future was rushing forward and the world would change to one that did not tolerate slavery, that no longer wanted to accept the shoddy legal justifications for making human beings property. That future is still dragging us forward, even if it sometimes seems that we cannot see the ends. 

[bookstand]

Finished Reading: Grant Takes Command by Bruce Catton Grant Takes Command by Bruce Catton My rating: 4 of 5 stars View all my reviews

[bookstand]

Finished reading: Grant Moves South by Bruce Catton Grant Moves South by Bruce Catton My rating: 3 of 5 stars View all my reviews

[nathanalbright151]

Book Review: The Coming Fury

Book Review: The Coming Fury

The Coming Fury (The Centennial History Of The Civil War #1), by Bruce Catton

This book is one I read somewhat out of order, it being the third book I read in the series after having read the second and the third ones before.  And intriguingly, this book would have been a very worthwhile setup for the other two, even if it only covers the area between the Democratic convention of 1860 and the…

View On WordPress

[nathanalbright151]

Book Review: Never Call Retreat

Book Review: Never Call Retreat

Never Call Retreat (The Centennial History Of The Civil War #3), by Bruce Catton

Even though in general I consider the end of the Civil War to be a best case scenario (which the author agrees with), there is a sense of melancholy about the end of this particular book.  A large part of that melancholy comes from the framing of this particular book, as the author examines what could have been, one…

View On WordPress