You can't trust anything these days: mixing up Kentucky and Tennessee

Patrick Neilsen Hayden at Making Light (thanks Brad DeLong):

John Keegan, author of the excellent The Face of Battle (1976) and many other books, is possibly the most widely-respected military historian alive. James M. McPherson is an eminent historian of the American Civil War; his Pulitzer Prize-winning Battle Cry of Freedom (1988) is often called the best single-volume history of that conflict.

Keegan has now published his own history of the American Civil War, and McPherson has reviewed it in the New York Times. And by “reviewed,” I mean “discredited it for the ages,” if even only a portion of the factual errors McPherson cites are in fact present in Keegan’s book.

As usual at Making Light, the comments are well worth reading, and in this case add a great deal to the topic at hand.

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