Sunday, January 6, 2013

THE STATE OF JONES - first book of the year


I read a brief review of this one in The Washington Post and happened to stumble across a copy at my local library.  I wasn't looking for it, but someone had literally left a copy on a table.  The Post review seemed kind of interesting - Southerns who remain loyal to the Union during the Civil War ...

Title:  The State of Jones
Author: Sally Jenkins and John Stauffer
Company: Doubleday
389 pages
Grade: ** stars

The book started out holding my interest but there apparently wasn't a lot of documentation to be found on the main character - Newton Knight and his family and friends.  That results in a book that is divided into sections of straight forward civil war and post-war history, full of battle descriptions, and short biographical segments on various characters.  Again, I was fine with that aspect of the book.  Unfortunately, gigantic chunks of the book were based on speculation, guesses, and assumptions.  Reading the book I kept wondering how much of this was reality, versus fiction.   Mildly entertaining and a pretty quick read.

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