Confederate Admiral: The Life and Wars of Franklin Buchanan (Library of Naval Biography)

Rating:
Summary: A Readable Book on a Prickly Character
Review: I've just finished CONFEDERATE ADMIRAL and the more I reflect on it the more solid it seems. A great job of professional history and biography. Symonds sets Buchanan in his time, and does a great job of presenting a guy many of us wd not get along with in person, and whose ideas would not pass muster today, but presenting him without judgment in the context of his time and profession. I never felt the author liked him, but I never felt he disliked Buchanan either; it felt . . . objective. What a word, how seldom we see objective reporting today! Read this book to see what it means, and to follow a real roller-coaster of a career in a stormy century and time in America. Damn nice writing too. Thanks Mr Symonds!

Rating:
Summary: A Readable Book on a Prickly Character
Review: I've just finished CONFEDERATE ADMIRAL and the more I reflect on it the more solid it seems. A great job of professional history and biography. Symonds sets Buchanan in his time, and does a great job of presenting a guy many of us wd not get along with in person, and whose ideas would not pass muster today, but presenting him without judgment in the context of his time and profession. I never felt the author liked him, but I never felt he disliked Buchanan either; it felt . . . objective. What a word, how seldom we see objective reporting today! Read this book to see what it means, and to follow a real roller-coaster of a career in a stormy century and time in America. Damn nice writing too. Thanks Mr Symonds!