This is not a traditional story of North versus South but rather a story of North and South versus the Confederacy. Running alongside this revisionist narrative in Armies of Deliverance is a more-or-less straightforward political and military history of the Civil War, done very well. Varon creates thrilling set pieces of all the familiar battles and controversies.
Elizabeth R. Varon is Langbourne M. Williams Professor of American History and a member of the Executive Council of the John L. Nau III Center for Civil War History at the University of Virginia.