Hi Everyone! I've been asked by a couple of subscribers who've written me personally to order the new Andersonville CD-ROM to also give my impression of William Marvel's book, "Andersonville: The Last Depot," when I find the time to do so... Well, I'm fairly well "caught-up" now so here goes: _____________________________________ Despite disliking the book when I first began it, I found myself appreciating Marvel's ability to strike a balance on a controversial subject by the time I completed it. My interest in Andersonville has (or, I should say, *had*) a decidedly Union-bias when I began reading it and I found the first few chapters surprisingly sympathetic to the Southern cause. Half-way through, it dawned on me that the bias I brought to the book had caused me to dislike the book initially but, as I continued reading, I began to understand that Marvel truly was treating Andersonville with academic precision and his extensive research was both impressive and compelling. In short, while the book didn't cause me to exculpiate the South's treatment of Union prisoners there, it did persuade me to view the atrocities there in wider context, namely that war truly is hell and both battle and prisons are simply horrible microcosms of war in general. Yes, Andersonville was inexcusable, just as was treatment of Union prisoners at Cahaba (AL) and Confederate prisoners at Elmira (NY). In short, I thank Marvel for giving me that wider, more complete, context in which to place Andersonville. ______________________________________ Some might find this interesting: When I first wrote the List on 19 JUN 1998 (the day after we started), we had 21 subscribers. Today, one and a half months later, we have 88 subscribers! According to my calcualtions, that's 319% growth, or about 2,550% annual growth! Yikes! <grin> BTW, sales of that new Andersonville CD-ROM have been pretty good and I want to say thanks to all that have already ordered it; you'all should be receiving it soon. Anyone else interested can read about the CD-ROM and order it using instructions found at: http://www.rapidnet.com/~greg/Tom/CDROM.html Remember, a portion of each sale will be used to develop additional Sultana and Andersonville resources on-line including (but not limited to) a complete, searchable Sultana passenger list and a web-page for subscribers to both the SULTANA-L and ANDERSONVILLE-L mailing lists that will have links to List archives, FAQ's, links to all other relevant & interesting pages, etc. Take Care! Greg Reeves ANDERSONVILLE-L and SULTANA-L Listowner greg@rapidnet.com see: http://www.rapidnet.com/~greg/Tom