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Recently, the Civil War has been the subject of novels by Howard Bahr, Michael Shaara, Charles Frazier, and Robert Hicks, to name a few. Its perennial appeal is due not only to the fact that it was fought on our own soil, but also that it captures perfectly our long-time and ongoing ambivalence about race. Doctorow examines this question extensively, chronicling the dislocation of both southern whites and Negroes as Sherman burned and destroyed all that they had ever known. Sherman is a well-drawn character, pictured as a crazy tactical genius pitted against his West Point counterparts. Doctorow creates a context for the march: "The brutal romance of war was still possible in the taking of spoils. Each town the army overran was a prize... There was something undeniably classical about it, for how else did the armies of Greece and Rome supply themselves?"
The characters depicted on the march are those people high and low, white and black, whose lives are forever changed by war: Pearl, the newly free daughter of a white plantation owner and one of his slaves, Colonel Sartorius, a competent, remote, almost robotic surgeon; several officers, both Union and Confederate; two soldiers, Arly and Will, who provide comic relief in the manner of Shakespeare's fools until, suddenly, their roles are not funny anymore.
Doctorow has captured the madness of war in his description of the condition of a dispossessed Southern white woman: "What was clear at this moment was that Mattie Jameson's mental state befitted the situation in which she found herself. The world at war had risen to her affliction and made it indistinguishable." And later, " This was not war as adventure, nor war for a solemn cause, it was war at its purest, a mindless mass rage severed from any cause, ideal, or moral principle."
As we have come to expect, Doctorow puts the reader in the picture; never more so than in recalling "The March" and letting us see it as a cautionary tale for our times. --Valerie Ryan
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Book Description Paperback. Condition: new. Paperback. March is set towards the end of the American Civil War and follows General Sherman's epic march with sixty thousand Union troops through Georgia and the Carolinas, one of the major manoeuvres to bring the war to its conclusion. THE MARCH ranges widely over a diverse set of characters - each of whom is brilliantly realised - so that we see the war through the eyes of both white-skinned Pearl (daughter of slave and slave owner) and General Sherman; a deserting confederate who sets himself up as a photographer; a ruthless army surgeon who enjoys his reputation as an amputator; and the two brothers of a brutal slave owner who find themselves in uniforms facing Sherman's forces.Doctorow's narrative brilliantly blends the intimate and the epic, sweeping the reader along the route of Sherman's notorious march and making us care deeply about each individual's fate. A brutal and brilliant novel set in the American Civil War. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability. Seller Inventory # 9780349119595
Book Description paperback. Condition: New. Language: ENG. Seller Inventory # 9780349119595
Book Description Paperback / softback. Condition: New. New copy - Usually dispatched within 4 working days. A brutal and brilliant novel set in the American Civil War. Seller Inventory # B9780349119595
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Book Description Paperback. Condition: Brand New. 384 pages. 7.80x5.00x1.02 inches. In Stock. Seller Inventory # __0349119597
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Book Description Condition: New. 2006. New Ed. Paperback. A brutal and brilliant novel set in the American Civil War. Num Pages: 384 pages. BIC Classification: FA. Category: (G) General (US: Trade). Dimension: 196 x 127 x 26. Weight in Grams: 308. . . . . . Seller Inventory # V9780349119595
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Book Description Condition: New. 2006. New Ed. Paperback. A brutal and brilliant novel set in the American Civil War. Num Pages: 384 pages. BIC Classification: FA. Category: (G) General (US: Trade). Dimension: 196 x 127 x 26. Weight in Grams: 308. . . . . . Books ship from the US and Ireland. Seller Inventory # V9780349119595
Book Description Paperback. Condition: New. Seller Inventory # 6666-HCE-9780349119595