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A World on Fire: Britain's Crucial Role in the American Civil War, by Amanda Foreman
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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
10 BEST BOOKS • THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW • 2011
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY
The Washington Post • The New Yorker • Chicago Tribune • The Economist • Nancy Pearl, NPR • Bloomberg.com • Library Journal • Publishers Weekly
Acclaimed historian Amanda Foreman follows the phenomenal success of her New York Times bestseller Georgiana: Duchess of Devonshire with her long-awaited second work of nonfiction: the fascinating story of the American Civil War and the major role played by Britain and its citizens in that epic struggle.
Even before the first rumblings of secession shook the halls of Congress, British involvement in the coming schism was inevitable. Britain was dependent on the South for cotton, and in turn the Confederacy relied almost exclusively on Britain for guns, bullets, and ships. The Union sought to block any diplomacy between the two and consistently teetered on the brink of war with Britain. For four years the complex web of relationships between the countries led to defeats and victories both minute and history-making. In A World on Fire, Amanda Foreman examines the fraught relations from multiple angles while she introduces characters both humble and grand, bringing them to vivid life over the course of her sweeping and brilliant narrative.
Between 1861 and 1865, thousands of British citizens volunteered for service on both sides of the Civil War. From the first cannon blasts on Fort Sumter to Lee’s surrender at Appomattox, they served as officers and infantrymen, sailors and nurses, blockade runners and spies. Through personal letters, diaries, and journals, Foreman has woven together their experiences to form a panoramic yet intimate view of the war on the front lines, in the prison camps, and in the great cities of both the Union and the Confederacy. Through the eyes of these brave volunteers we see the details of the struggle for life and the great and powerful forces that threatened to demolish a nation.
In the drawing rooms of London and the offices of Washington, on muddy fields and aboard packed ships, Foreman reveals the decisions made, the beliefs held and contested, and the personal triumphs and sacrifices that ultimately led to the reunification of America. A World on Fire is a complex and groundbreaking work that will surely cement Amanda Foreman’s position as one of the most influential historians of our time.
- Sales Rank: #641069 in Books
- Published on: 2011-06-28
- Released on: 2011-06-28
- Format: Deckle Edge
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.58" h x 2.12" w x 6.66" l, 3.30 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 1008 pages
Amazon.com Review
Photographs from A World on Fire
Click on the photos below to enlarge.
The trenches at Petersberg, Virginia, 1865 Confederate President Jefferson Davis, 1808-1889 Victory Parade of the U.S. Army, Washington, D.C. May 24, 1865 Richard Bickerton Pemell Lyons, 2nd Lord Lyons 1817-1887
Review
A New York Times Top Ten Book of the Year!
The Economist, The New York Times, The New Yorker, The St Louis Post-Dispatch, Publishers Weekly and Library Journal all list A World on Fire as one of the best books of 2011!
"Ms. Foreman...is such an engaging writer that readers may find this 958-page volume too short."—Michael Burlingame, The Wall Street Journal
"Extraordinary cast....Thoroughly researched and well written...Remarkable."—Geoffrey Wheatcroft, The New York Times Book Review
"One puts down A World on Fire with a sense of awe. Foreman's skills as historian and writer are formidable."—The Boston Globe
"Foreman's descriptive gifts show especially well in bringing vividly to life the political and diplomatic worlds of Washington and London...A brief review can only hint at the expansive scope, rich detail and pulsing energy of A World on Fire."—The Washington Post
"[A] magisterial history."—Newsweek
"So expansive in its scope, and so well written...to call it a masterpiece somehow doesn't seem to do it justice."—Christian Science Monitor
About the Author
Amanda Foreman is a Visiting Research Fellow at Queen Mary, University of London. She won the Whitbread Prize for Georgiana: Duchess of Devonshire, which was adapted for the screen as The Duchess. Educated as an undergraduate at Sarah Lawrence College and with master’s and doctorate degrees in history from Oxford University, she is now married with five children and lives in New York.
Most helpful customer reviews
202 of 217 people found the following review helpful.
The American Civil War and the Brits
By Anne Colamosca
Amanda Foreman's " World on Fire" twelve years in the making and over 900 pages long, is not for the faint-hearted. It is not "Gone with the Wind" or "War and Peace" as some reviewers have suggested. There are no page-turning romances and women are very minor characters. But for the hard-core history buff, "World on Fire" is in some ways better than these great classic novels. It's plot zigzags among 200 characters -- including farmers, soldiers, cartoonists, politicians and labor leaders. It is gritty, off-center, more alive and more disturbing than these broad ranging novels. Unsentimental and a take-no-prisoners, bracing writing style, "World on Fire" is a work of great richness and descriptive power, a complex treat for those with strong concentration powers who don't mind an often confusing and abruptly changing plot strewn with dozens and dozens of unknown characters.
Foreman's research is prodigious,forthright and robust. It includes eye-opening accounts of poorly planned advances by both Union and Confederate armies, equipment pieced together like childrens' toys, and as always in war stories, countless vignettes of scared, hard-charging soldiers who are ultimately blown apart because of bad officers and bad equipment.
The British part of this story has been, for the most part, untold and unmined. Britain's political elites make it their business to constantly upbraid Lincoln and his Secretary of State, William Henry Seward. Above all, despite loftier proclamations against slavery, they don't want their lucrative cotton business ruined with the South and its slave labor. Former Tory turned Liberal Party leader, William Gladstone's role is eyebrow-raising throughout, as is the bad public relations gambit of the Union army when a famous journalist is unceremoniously drummed out of covering the war by Northern interests, unhappy at his balanced, often provocative coverage. Foreman has commented that she was struck in the course of her research by the large number of Brits who sympathized with the Southern states.
This wonderful, rich history can't be beat in terms of sheer real-life drama, complex, vulnerable characters and a depressed, tortured Cabinet in Washington, D.C. trying to deal with a President who has just lost a son to typhoid fever and a thousand other heart-searing problems. "World on Fire" is certainly worth the hard work.
80 of 86 people found the following review helpful.
A Monumental Achievement
By John D. Cofield
Amanda Foreman first demonstrated her ability to bring history to life with her biography Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire. Now she has surpassed herself with A World On Fire, a magnificent history of the American Civil War and the highly important part Great Britain played during it. Most Americans who have an interest in the Civil War period will already know that both the North and the South courted British support during the conflict, and that many British subjects were either strongly pro-Federal or vehemently pro-Confederate. But few will have realized the extent to which the war dominated British politics during the 1860s and the amount of British money and the numbers of British people who took an active part in the conflict. Nor will many British or American readers have understood until now the extent to which the Civil War and Britain's response to it shaped the "special relationship" the two nations have enjoyed for over a century.
In the years before the shooting started Britain and the United States had a troubled history. Britain played a major role in the US economy, particularly through the large amount of cotton she purchased each year for her textile mills. Neither fully trusted the other. Boundary disputes over the US Canadian border and other arguments dating back to the Revolution kept Anglo-American relations tense. The election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860 brought matters to a head, first because it led the South to secede and start to fight for its independence, and second because of Lincoln's appointment of William H. Seward as Secretary of State. Seward was ambitious to see the US grow and looked longingly north towards Britain's North American possession, Canada. For their part the British had an assertive government of its own dominated by Lord Palmerston, who was just as determined as Seward to see his nation grow ever stronger and more powerful. Complicating matters was the economic problem caused by the US blockade of the Confederacy, which meant Britain's textile industry was deprived of Southern cotton. The Confederacy hoped that this would bring Britain into the war on their side, and indeed many British leaders advocated intervention, but the idea of fighting to preserve slavery and (even more importantly) alienating the North, kept Britain neutral throughout the conflict.
Foreman's well known ability to skillfully detail personality and clearly describe complex historical events make the 800+ pages (not including another 150 pages of notes and index) of A World On Fire flow beautifully. Battles are described succinctly but with great attention to the fine human details, so that the reader feels the terror of Charleston's population as it comes under Federal bombardment, for example. Foreman is at her best when covering the negotiations and interplay between British and American politicians, so its easy to understand the motivations of men like Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis in America or Lord Russell and Lord Palmerston in Britain. Less well known figures like Charles Francis Adams, the US ambassador to Britain and James Mason, the Confederate commissioner, as well as Lord Lyons, the British representative in Washington, are also vividly described. Then there are the multitudes of private individuals who were drawn into the conflict on one side or another, sometimes tearing apart British as well as American families, such as what happened to the Duke of Devonshire when his son and heir joined the Confederate army while a younger son supported the North. Women's roles are not neglected, and the exploits of spies like Rose O'Neal Greenhow and Belle Boyd are well and colorfully described. I also appreciated Foreman's witty descriptions of some of the more eccentric Britons who got involved like Alfred Rubery, "one of life's nincompoops," or Feo Monck, "a force of nature, though a gentle one." Those stories made me laugh aloud even though the general tone of the book is naturally one of conflict and turmoil.
Perhaps the most important point Foreman makes in A World On Fire is that it changed Anglo-American relations forever. Both sides came to understand that the other could potentially be a terrible enemy or a great friend, and after the fighting came to an end both began to work towards a more cordial relationship. Cooperation slowly replaced competition in politics and diplomacy, and the foundations of what Churchill later called The Grand Alliance began to be laid. To me, as a native Southerner with great-great-grandfathers who fought for both the North and the South and who takes great pride in his more distant British ancestry, this was the most important and moving section of A World On Fire: the beginnings of that special relationship which still means so much to both nations.
55 of 63 people found the following review helpful.
Britian's role is not really the focus
By J. M. Lawniczak
Although the title of the book surely suggests that the focus will and should be on what was happening in Britain during the civil war, in fact this is mostly simply another comprehensive work on the civil war with slightly more information about Britain's view of the war than most. The best parts of the book for me were indeed those that describe what was happening in London, both in the government and in the American diplomatic mission there and what was happening in the British legation in Washington headed by Viscount Richard Lyons. Those parts represent, however, but a small portion of the book.
Instead, the main focus is on the various battles that were raging across America that made up the civil war. This is information already available in many ways, in particular through James McPherson's seminal works on the civil war. The author brought in the British card by including discussions of actions of subjects of the queen who had come over to the United States to fight in the war. Indeed that individual penetration added interest to the book in the same way that Steven Ambrose's discussions on what specific individuals were up to added interest to his books about the Second World War. But the story was really just about what was happening in America and the fact that some of the described players were of British origin was not, in my mind, a story about the British effect on the war.
The Trent affair towards the beginning of the rebellion where the North and Britain almost came to war because of the captain who removed two Southern envoys to Britain from a British vessel, was dealt with at length. That part of the book was in point to the title, well written and very interesting.
Overall, the book was entertaining and written well, just too long and mostly off topic. I would have been happier with a book about a quarter to a third of the length that really focused on Britain's role in the civil war.
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