'Your papers, please' must never be heard in America
If Ulysses Grant was the prototypical Dwight Eisenhower, and if William T. Sherman foreshadowed Omar Bradley, then it is not too much of a stretch to call Philip Sheridan the George Patton of the Union armies of the Civil War -- minus the ego-driven tantrums.
Some publishers promise readers through exaggerated book titles more than the authors intend. This can lead to cases of buyer's remorse. Happily, it is not the case with "Victors in Blue," which, despite its faintly misleading subtitle, is still a valuable addition to anyone's Civil War library and a treat to read.
The Vietnam War and the Walter Cronkite legend inculcated a strong distrust of the media in the military establishment. The sentiment is that if the press can lose America's wars, it is something to be dealt with warily, if at all. But what comes across as bias is often the product of structural and unavoidable aspects of reporting. The primary role of the press is to expose and publicize information, while the military norm, based on the need for operational security, is to withhold and control information.
Dr. Nassir Ghaemi is a professor of psychiatry at Tufts University who serves also on the faculty of the Harvard Medical School and holds degrees in history, philosophy and public health. He would seem well-equipped to explore the effects of mental illness on leadership abilities, and that he has done in a thoughtful and readable way.
Comedian Jerry Lewis' conspicuous absence will not be the only change at the Muscular Dystrophy Association's telethon this year.
This month marks the anniversary of the last time the United States unequivocally won a war.
Maj. Gen. John Alexander "Black Jack" Logan, the father of Memorial Day, was also the father of a hero.
To coincide with the 150th anniversary of the first shots of the Civil War, the Georgia Historical Society unveiled a historical marker Friday summing up the history of "40 acres" outside the cotton merchant's mansion that served as Gen. William T. Sherman's headquarters toward the end of the war.
Preserved for nearly 150 years, perhaps by its own obscurity, Camp Lawton began yielding treasures from the Civil War almost as soon as archeologists began searching for the short-lived Confederate prison camp.
If money is the "sinewsof war," as Cicero wrote, fraud schemes such as bid-rigging, bribery and embezzlement are the cancers that thwart victory. During the Civil War, corrupt contractors "shamelessly hurried to the assault on the Treasury, like a cloud of locusts," Regis de Trobriand wrote in "Four Years With the Army of the Potomac."
"War is hell," said Civil War Gen. William T. Sherman, but its grim consequences are only a part of a traveling exhibition of combat photography called "The American Soldier."
For example, Mr. Castel gives Sherman his props for capturing the railhead of Atlanta, but he barely mentions his Christmas 1864 seizure of Savannah.
A reporter is skeptical, probing, seeking to tease out information that the subject may not want known, and will say whatever he needs to say to get the scoop.
