This exhaustive, but not exhausting, volume is eminently readable and paints a fascinating picture of this complex individual ... This book is an excellent blend of personal and national history, intertwined in the life of a man who was a master of his profession at a time when our nation’s survival depended on his being so.
Mr. McDonough’s masterly account is the product of a historian’s lifelong study, including extensive research into Civil War battles such as Shiloh, where Sherman had his first combat experience when surprised by a Confederate attack ... Mr. McDonough is especially perceptive about Sherman’s postwar policies as commanding general of the Army, which were, unfortunately, consonant with those of Southern segregationists. [He] present compelling evidence that not only did Sherman treat freed slaves with decency and even respect, he was not averse to sitting down with them, chatting and sharing his cigars ... a full-blooded narrative that is sometimes...And yet Mr. McDonough left me wanting more of Sherman, a reaction that his own men shared.
McDonough is especially good in showing the role that Sherman played in supporting Grant both militarily and emotionally. The deep trust that grew between the two became a major asset to the Union, especially when they were conducting the two major campaigns of 1864-65, with Sherman in the southeast and Grant in Virginia. McDonough is at his best in portraying Sherman’s military qualities ... Oddly, for a book of epic scale, McDonough’s recounting of Sherman’s march in November and December 1864 is a bit flat, less colorful than his lively earlier depictions of Sherman’s emergence as a leader at the battle of Shiloh and in battles for Atlanta.
McDonough’s massive William Tecumseh Sherman: In the Service of My Country is a solid if plodding contribution to Sherman studies. McDonough, author of several Civil War-themed books, gives the general a full cradle-to-grave treatment ... McDonough’s account of this vital chapter of the war and the sweep of Sherman’s life is detailed and authoritative, but also curiously muted. The author refrains from Margaret Mitchell-style melodrama, but there is something missing from these pages, an animating spirit that would make Sherman fully live and breathe.
Revisionist history is not McDonough's aim here. He views Sherman through a conventional lens that focuses on the records of his subject's life while blurring the psychology of this complex figure who was second to Ulysses Grant as the major military leader of the time ... Civil War buffs should appreciate McDonough's accounts of the battles, and history enthusiasts his concise descriptions of the events that led to the war. Readers familiar with contemporary psychoanalytic biographies will find no clues to Sherman's interior life. Echoing the lament 'Where are the editors?' this biographer seemed to have emptied his years of research into his book, especially the contents of many letters that should have been trimmed.
...[McDonough] humanizes this fixed, violent caricature of Sherman in his comprehensive new biography ... McDonough's biography is a definitive, full-blooded account of a complex man.
