Sherman: The Ruthless Victor

As a part of a series of short biographies on generals published by Thomas Nelson, Sherman: The Ruthless Victor serves as basic introduction to the famous (infamous?) Union Civil War general William Tecumseh Sherman.   Authors von Hassel and Breslin make Sherman accessible as a person, filling out details of his upbringing and experiences of life outside the military and Civil War years.  However, the content is heavily tilted towards his life before and during the war, with very little space given to what he did after the conclusion of the war.  As I understand the purpose of this entire series on generals, this book fares well enough – it is certainly written to engage the non-expert and introduce readers to a well-known person without too much focus on military strategy or battles.   Neither author is an academic historian of the Civil War, which perhaps helps them to focus on understanding the person.  However, even as a general introduction, I believe it would have benefited from at least nominal use of primary source material for substantiation of claims, or even just to give an idea to the reader of how General Sherman thought and wrote.  There is no quote from Sherman in the whole book longer than a phrase of a few words (and neither are there any footnotes to help people track down more information on a certain topic, although there is a brief bibliography).   All in all, this biography is a sufficient, but plain, introduction to a very interesting person.   Note: this book was provided for review courtesy of booksneeze.com.