Book Reviews

June 21, 2010 In “Tell Them We Are Singing for Jesus,” her lively account of the first Fisk Jubilee Singers, Toni P. Anderson provides a vivid portrait of the ideals and personalities that shaped one of America’s musical treasures.

June 15, 2010 Recruits from Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois went off to fight in 1861 to put down a rebellion promoted by radical secessionists. Few of these soldiers thought of abolition as an issue. As the war continued and intensified after 1863, however, their own practical experiences with freed slaves, led them to reconsider. In The Good Men Who Won the War, Robert Hunt traces the infinite variations in how the veterans came to think of the Civil War.

June 14, 2010 On Monday, June 7, the war in Afghanistan became the longest in U.S. history, surpassing the eight and a half years the nation officially spent in Vietnam. As in that seemingly endless conflict, American troops in Afghanistan face a determined guerilla resistance that exploits hostile terrain to maximum advantage. Combat casualties have been heavy, and nowhere heavier than in the Korengal Valley, which sits about fifty miles due north of the Khyber Pass. Hellishly hot in the summer, bitterly cold in the winter, it is a place where foreign fighters infiltrate from the high peaks of Pakistan, paying local herdsman five dollars a day to take pot-shots at Americans crouched in tiny outposts. Sebastian Junger, author of the nonfiction bestsellers The Perfect Storm and A Death in Belmont, traveled to the Korengal Valley in 2007 and 2008 on assignment for Vanity Fair, to produce a series of articles on the most active combat unit within the U.S. Army. His reporting became the basis for War, a fascinating book that chronicles the daily practice of war. He will be in Memphis to discuss the book at Davis-Kidd Booksellers on June 15 at 6 p.m.