The Civil War 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential People in the War Between the States

Provides brief profiles of the one hundred most significant persons of the American Civil War, ranked in order of importance

Wooster (history, Texas A&M Univ.; Miles and the Twilight of the Frontier Army, LJ 5/15/93) lists the 100 people whom he regards as being the most influential during the Civil War era and gives three- or four-page biographies of each. Ranging from Abraham Lincoln to Harriet Beecher Stowe and Napoleon III, the subjects are not exclusively military or political figures but were involved in all aspects of society. Compiling a list of the 100 most significant individuals involved in anything is not without risk; surely someone will argue, "Hey! You didn't include..." or "What do you mean ranking Andrew Johnson as number six?" Still, Wooster has put together a very useful and readable biographical source. Recommended for the reference collection of any public library.?Joseph Toschik, Half Moon Bay P.L., CA
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Wooster's capsule biographies of 100 Civil War figures he deems "most influential" entertain as they inform. Wooster cast his net widely in selecting the 100. He gives high places to such obvious candidates as Lincoln, who is given pride of first place, and Lee, who comes in fourth, but he also includes noncombatants Clara Barton, Walt Whitman, Frederick Douglass, and Mary Todd Lincoln (whom he considers unjustly maligned) and various figures whose roles were distinctly negative, such as John Wilkes Booth and Henry Wirz, commandant of the infamous Andersonville, Ga., prison camp and "the only Confederate," Wooster says, "executed for war crimes." Economic players in the war, such as canned-meat tycoon Philip Armour, appear, too, indicating Wooster's effort to search out representative influences on every aspect of the war, not just the battlefield. One might wish for a few military leaders who did not hold independent commands but hardly for greater mastery of the capsule biography than Wooster shows. A high priority for the Civil War shelves. Roland Green