Eyewitness: Civil War

My son is a history buff at age 9. So these books are great for him. He loves the pictures. Highly recommend.

DK has a great formula for introducing topics to kids. Beautiful graphics, excellent layout and good summaries of important facts surrounding their topics.

Such is the same for their Civil War book. For the child wanting (or needing) an introduction to the Civil War this book will serve well. The pictures draw the attention of the browser and the text gives a pretty good brief summary of the why, who and what for the reader.

An excellent addition for your child's library.

DK is great at creating books full of high-quality photos. This book includes great photos of Civil War soldiers in their uniforms. It also has photos of soldiers lying dead on a battlefield and a Southern home riddled with holes from canon fire, photos I had never seen in my history books. It has good, close-up photos and drawings of the guns, grenades, hardtack biscuits and other everyday items used by soldiers back then. Very interesting!

I think that with the topic of the Civil War the DK Eyewitness Book series has met its match. The goal of these wonderfully illustrated books is to give readers the equivalent of going to a museum, albeit one that is able to collect photographs, paintings, and artifacts from dozens of choice sources. However, when you are dealing with a topic as large as the Civil War all you can really do is scratch the surface and provide readers with a general introduction. "Civil War" is definitely not the first book a young student would turn to for information about the topic, but for those whose previous readings have kindled a passion for this pivotal period in American history this book will be a treat, primarily in its depiction of artifacts. Young Civil War buffs will already be familiar with the portraits of the Union and Confederate generals, and many of the photographs and etchings will be familiar from other illustrated works. Consequently, they will find the contemporary photographs of priceless historic artifacts to more interesting that the familiar period illustrations.

This photo-filled guide focuses each two-page spread on particular topics ranging from the Underground Railroad and how both sides raised armies to black volunteers and field artillery. The war itself is reduced to the battles of Bull Run and Gettysburg, the siege of Vicksburg, Sherman's March to the Sea, and Lee's surrender. Again, this underscores that this is a supplemental volume and not a primary source of information about the Civil War. The rule of thumb here is that the less you know about the Civil War the more you will be impressed with this volume, because the more you know the more likely you have already encountered most of the information and illustrations contained herein. I also think that this particular volume tries a bit too hard. Case in point, the famous engraving of Senator Charles Sumner being attacked by South Carolina Congressman Preston Brooks with a cane on the floor of the U.S. Senate colors in the two main figures, and other illustrations have been colorized as well.

However, all of this simply goes to underscore that the great value of the DK Eyewitness Books series is that they show us things we have never seen and in my case this particular subject is one that has already exposed me to a lot of what we find in this book. Several volumes in this format could have been devoted to the topic of the Civil War, so I would not be surprised if somewhere down the road some companion volumes to this effort were produced.