Mort Kunstler, whose painting this is, is one of the leading sentimentalists of American Civil War art. He does Union pieces, too, but seems to prefer Rebel ones, probably because they sell better.
Kershaw’s Brigade of South Carolinians held the sunken road on Marye’s Heights at Fredricksburg in December, 1862, stopping multiple Union charges until the battlefield was littered with Union dying and dead.
Comments Off on Kershaw’s Brigade at Fredricksburg
Tagged American Civil War, Kershaw's Brigade, South Carolina
Meryl Yourish: What A Difference A Gun Makes
Harry Smeltzer: Living Monuments
Bernie: Should Putting Women on a Leash Be Legal?
Zombie: Mohammed Image Archive
J-Lem Post: What to do with lemons like Thomas Friedman
Bernie, again: Gross Muslim Jokes
Amazon: Start-up Nation: The Story of Israel’s Economic Miracle
Knoxville 1863: Civil War Flapdoodle
Comments Off on Favorite headlines
Posted in Blogosphere, Civil War, Israel, Library, Scribbles
Tagged gross muslim jokes, should putting women on a leash be legal?, what a difference a gun makes, What to do with lemons like Thomas Friedman
Of the scores of old and new battle tanks on open-air display at the Israeli Armored Corps museum at Latrun, west of Jerusalem, only the M-4 Sherman gets a tall pedestal and flood-lamps to spotlight it by night.
The modified M-4 was Israel’s mainstay in the wars of 1948 and 1956 and was still in use in the wars of 1967 and 1973. So it gets official reverence, anyhow, even if some of its crews probably hated it as much or more than some American veterans of World War II who considered it outclassed by German armor.
But the tank that once graced the lawns of most National Guard armories across the U.S. (now replaced, for the most part, by M-48 Pattons) still has its defenders. Some of them recently unloaded on Death Traps, a new World War II memoir about the problems of maintaining the under-armored and under-gunned beasts. They were, of course, appropriately named for an American Civil War general who was also quite controversial.
Comments Off on The Sherman Tank
Posted in Civil War, Israel, Library, Science/Engineering, Scribbles, Troops
Tagged "Death Traps", Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman, Israeli Armored Corps, Latrun tank museum, M-4 Sherman tank, M-48 Patton
The new U.S. Army recruiting commercial, a paean to West Point, ROTC and the OCS, is stirring. But it skips from Washington to Teddy R. and onward, missing Grant, Sherman. The freeing of the slaves, guys! No big deal?
I suppose there’s just too many Southerners in the Army these days to want to risk bringing up bad memories of civil wars, etc. Hardly their fault. Too many wimps on both coasts won’t join.
As a onetime Army recruiter, I know the Army was never much good at making commercials. But (except for losing those good Union boys, the blacks as well as the whites) this one is pretty fair. At least they haven’t dumped the good Army Strong music.
The Civil War reenactor community gets more ludicrous by the day.
This latest compilation of pictures of these stern-faced, white-haired, pot-bellied pretend soldiers at today’s 150th commemoration of the firing on Fort Sumter shows the trend. They’re less reminiscent of real Civil War soldiers than they are poster boys for the 21st century’s geriatric obesity epidemic.
UPDATE: A more important (in the long run) anniversary of the day was Yuri Gagarin’s Vostok 1 flight into orbit and return, fifty years ago, the first time anyone had done that.
Comments Off on Old, fat farbs of the Civil War
Posted in Civil War
Tagged Civil War reenactors, farbs, obesity epidemic
That’s how many misspellings, typos and left-out words I found in The Longest Nights: General John D. Imboden & The Confederate Retreat From Gettysburg.
It’s a modest piece of short journalism, obviously written to snag some sales during the Civil War Sesquicentennial. It mainly joins lengthy quotes from Imboden’s post-war magazine articles, and quotes from other participants, presumably from their memoirs and diaries, though the brief bibliography doesn’t identify the sources.
The author, Heather K. Michon, is a freelance writer who says at the end of her 27 KB effort for the Kindle that she “is a writer on a mission to prove that history need not be boring.” The price, like so much indie work these days, is 99 cents.
Still, even history that’s not boring needs editing and proofreading to rise above the stereotype of self-published work. Without them, the reader stumbles along, not so much enlightened about a relatively unexamined and interesting incident of the Civil War as he is annoyed, his disbelief firmly grounded.
Comments Off on Twenty-five errors
Posted in Civil War, Library, Scribbles
Tagged Confederate Retreat From Gettysburg, Gen. John Imboden, Heather Michon
Not that I expect to equal this result any time soon, because crime novels have always sold better than Civil War ones.
But I’ve been watching the debate over how unknown, indie authors can best amass readership without extensive (and expensive) marketing and I’ve become convinced that pricing one’s eBook at 99 cents is an excellent start.
Also, thanks to Al Past of Beeville, Texas, for including my professionally-edited, independently-published Knoxville 1863 in this new posting of his.
Comments Off on Knoxville 1863 now 99 cent eBook
Posted in Blogosphere, Civil War, Library
Tagged "Distant Cousin", "The List", 99 cent ebooks, Al Past, J.A. (Joe) Konrath, Knoxville 1863
THE TEXAS SCRIBBLER 
