A focus on authors

[KLSDAD]

I'd be interested in learning from a thread that focuses on the prominent authors.

From the old guys like Freeman, to the older guys like Pollard to the current authors.

Biases toward one side or the other.

Totally worthless from the standpoint of history vs needing to weed out some works.

Clearly the authority on a subject?

 

[Elennsar]

This is a off the top of my head analysis of Freeman.

Freeman is clearly extremely devoted to Lee. Lee is a virtual saint, and a near flawless general.

I do not think he is entirely biased towards one side or another.

Some of his descriptions of other generals suffer from drawing from sources that are irredeemably blindly biased.

His figures seem to err on the low end for the Confederates. Whether this was from the best available data or deliberately portraying the Confederates as the underdog, I'm not sure.

Ewell and Longstreet are not entirely fairly treated (see point #3?).

No one has attempted an equivalant book to Lee's Lieutenants (to my knowledge), so we are left with individual biographies as the only comparison. By default, this leaves him as the authority.



Connelly, in the same spirit (Looking at his two books on the Army of Tennessee, as I have not read his others):

EXTREMELY negative about most of the generals of the AoT.

No noticable bias towards one side or another.

In error on some areas of detail.

Surprisingly uncritical towards Bragg given #1.

Replacable with better works when they are available, but not bad.