Download Fierce Patriot: The Tangled Lives of William Tecumseh Sherman AudioBook Free
With a distinctive, witty, and conversational tone historian Robert O'Connell breaks down the often paradoxical, easily caricatured figure of Basic William T. Sherman for the most well-rounded portrait of the person yet written. There have been many Shermans, relating to O'Connell. Most prominently was Sherman the armed service strategist (indeed, one of the biggest strategists ever), who gained an gratitude of geography from early on campaigns out western and applied it to his famous Civil Warfare march. Then there is "Uncle Billy", Sherman's popular persona, the charismatic and beloved head of the Army of the West, and instrumental in the success of the transcontinental railroad in his post-war years. This Sherman, as O'Connell writes, was "the human being embodiment of manifest destiny". From north to south and east to western, Sherman dedicated his life to keeping america united. Finally, there is Sherman the family man, whose tempestuous relationship with his better half (and stepsister!) Ellen is out of an Dickens book. Throughout, O'Connell breaks down the misperceptions about Sherman, bolstered both by modern day journalists and by the work of modern historians. O'Connell makes a convincing case that Sherman's march through the south had not been a plan of unmitigated devastation, but a required little bit of strategy and the perceived chaos has been overblown. O'Connell's Sherman is in the end a complicated and quintessential 19th-century American. Robert O' Connell performed as Senior Analyst at the U.S. Army Brains Agency's Foreign Science and Technology Centre and was a contributing editor to MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Government History.
