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Training Ground: Grant, Lee, Sherman, and Davis in the Mexican War, 1846-1848 [NOOK Book]
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Dugard (The Last Voyage of Columbus) offers a fast-paced, colloquially written account of the Mexican War of 1848, constructed around the experiences of the U.S. Army's corps of junior officers. Shaped by the common experience of West Point and tempered by battle, these comrades in arms (including Lee, Grant, Davis and Sherman) matured into the leading generals and statesmen on both sides of the Civil War. Dugard introduces others as well, from Union artilleryman Henry Hunt to Confederate icon Stonewall Jackson, who also learned their craft fighting the Mexicans. At the war's end, commanding general Winfield Scott saluted West Point's graduates as the key to America's victory over Mexico. The image of a band of brothers transformed into enemies by conscience and politics is a familiar trope of the Civil War, but Dugard's spirited narrative animates a group of men whose force of character, professional skill and ability to think outside conventional limits revitalized the sclerotic army. Readers will conclude this book with reinforced awareness of why the Civil War was so long and so bitterly fought: because, as Dugard shows, the contending armies were shaped and led by a remarkably capable-and experienced-body of officers. (May)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.In his newest work, New York Times best-selling author Dugard (The Last Voyage of Columbus: America's Continental Dream and the Mexican War, 1846-1848) gives a straightforward account of the Mexican War, but with a twist. He lets us see the war through the eyes of several young officers-primarily Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee but also George G. Meade, William T. Sherman, Jefferson Davis, Stonewall Jackson, and others-who would rise to prominence during the Civil War. While Dugard does sketch in the big picture so that the reader is able to understand the course of the Mexican War, his purpose is to provide a richly detailed account of the battles, secret missions, and daring rescues and thus to show how participation in the Mexican War prepared these junior officers for the roles they would later play in the Civil War. Academic libraries will prefer Joseph Wheelan's Invading Mexico, Timothy J. Henderson's A Glorious Defeat, and John C. Pinheiro's Manifest Ambition. This less scholarly book will appeal to lay readers and Civil War buffs and is recommended for all public libraries.
—Stephen H. Peters
C_S_Glass
Posted February 6, 2010
When your friends cannot understand how reading a history book could possibly be interesting, this is what you give them. Don't even let them complain that it's about war. Marvelously written as if it was a riveting novel, The Training Ground gives a count-by-count rehash of the battles of the Mexican-American war along with excellent insights into the main "characters". Dougard uses short chapters to keep the book moving while sparing no detail in the glory and the greusomeness of war- even the descriptions of operations on injured soldiers are captivating. Yes, as a read, it's that good.
For those acquainted with the Civil War, it's even better- personal stories of Grant, Davis, Longstreet, Lee, and more peak the curiosity as they were all fighting for and with each other, proving themselves to themselves and others, totally unknowing of what was to come fifteen years later. Anyone who likes the Civil War must read this because that conflict is totally and completely unimaginable had the leaders and soldiers not experienced the Mexican "training ground". What a different country this would be today; all of these men were in a "military lull" that they expected to never end, but this war prepared them for the fight of a lifetime in the future.
[A note I must mention- this book was not about Lincoln, but two things as printed were incorrect. 1) He was elected President in 1860, not 1859; 2) He lived in Indiana between his youth in Kentucky and adulthood in Illinois, as opposed to moving straight from KY to IL. I don't know how these things were not corrected before publishing, but they do not take away anything.]
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Overview
Few historical figures are as inextricably linked as Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee. But less than two decades before they faced each other as enemies at Appomattox, they had been brothers--both West Point graduates, both wearing blue, and both fighting in the same cadre in the Mexican War. They were not alone: Sherman, Davis, Jackson-nearly all of the Civil War's greatest soldiers had been forged in the heat of Vera Cruz and Monterrey.The Mexican War has faded from our national memory, but it was a struggle of enormous significance: the first U.S. war waged on foreign soil; and it nearly doubled our nation. At this fascinating juncture of American history, a group of young men came ...