Böcker av Robert L. O'Connell

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • William Tecumseh Sherman was more than just one of our greatest generals. Fierce Patriot is a bold, revisionist portrait of how this iconic and enigmatic figure exerted an outsize impact on the American landscape-and the American character. America's first "celebrity" general, William Tecumseh Sherman was a man of many faces. Some were exalted in the public eye, others known only to his intimates. In this bold, revisionist portrait, Robert L. O'Connell captures the man in full for the first time. From his early exploits in Florida, through his brilliant but tempestuous generalship during the Civil War, to his postwar career as a key player in the building of the transcontinental railroad, Sherman was, as O'Connell puts it, the "human embodiment of Manifest Destiny." Here is Sherman the military strategist, a master of logistics with an uncanny grasp of terrain and brilliant sense of timing. Then there is "Uncle Billy," Sherman's public persona, a charismatic hero to his troops and quotable catnip to the newspaper writers of his day. Here, too, is the private Sherman, whose appetite for women, parties, and the high life of the New York theater complicated his already turbulent marriage. Warrior, family man, American icon, William Tecumseh Sherman has finally found a biographer worthy of his protean gifts. A masterful character study whose myriad insights are leavened with its author's trademark wit, Fierce Patriot will stand as the essential book on Sherman for decades to come.Praise for Fierce Patriot "A superb examination of the many facets of the iconic Union general."-General David Petraeus "Sherman's standing in American history is formidable. . . . It is hard to imagine any other biography capturing it all in such a concise and enlightening fashion."-National Review "A sharply drawn and propulsive march through the tortured psyche of the man."-The Wall Street Journal "[O'Connell's] narrative of the March to the Sea is perhaps the best I have ever read."-Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post "A surprising, clever, wise, and powerful book."-Evan Thomas, author of Ike's Bluff

`Accurst be he that first invented war'', wrote Christopher Marlowe - a declaration that most of us would take as a literary, not literal, construction. But in this sweeping overview of the rise of civilization, Robert O''Connell finds that war is indeed an invention - an institution that arose due to very specific historical circumstances, an institution that now verges on extinction.In Ride of the Second Horseman, O''Connell probes the distant human past to show how and why war arose. He begins with a definition that distinguishes between war and mere feuding: war involves group rather than individual issues, political or economic goals, and direction by some governmental structure, carried out with the intention of lasting results. With this definition, he finds that ants are the only other creatures that conduct it - battling other colonies for territory andslaves. But ants, unlike humans, are driven by their genes; in humans, changes in our culture and subsistence patterns, not our genetic hardware, brought the rise of organized warfare. O''Connell draws on anthropology and archeology to locate the rise of war sometime after the human transition from nomadic huntingand gathering to agriculture, when society split between farmers and pastoralists. Around 5500 BC, these pastoralists initiated the birth of war with raids on Middle Eastern agricultural settlements. The farmers responded by ringing their villages with walls, setting off a process of further social development, intensified combat, and ultimately the rise of complex urban societies dependent upon warfare to help stabilize what amounted to highly volatile population structures, beset by frequentbouts of famine and epidemic disease. In times of overpopulation, the armies either conquered new lands or self-destructed, leaving fewer mouths to feed. In times of underpopulation, slaves were taken to provide labor. O''Connell explores the histories of the civilizations of ancient Sumeria, Egypt,Assyria, China, and the New World, showing how war came to each and how it adapted to varying circumstances. On the other hand, societies based on trade employed war much more selectively and pragmatically. Thus, Minoan Crete, long protected from marauding pastoralists, developed a wealthy mercantile society marked by unmilitaristic attitudes, equality between men and women, and a relative absence of class distinctions. In Assyria, by contrast, war came to be an end in itself, in a culturedominated by male warriors.Despite the violence in the world today, O''Connell finds reason for hope. The industrial revolution broke the old patterns of subsistence: war no longer serves the demographic purpose it once did. Fascinating and provocative, Ride of the Second Horseman offers a far-reaching tour of human history that suggests the age-old cycle of war may now be near its end.