by Kenneth C. Davis
So secure is Kenneth Davis's faith in our ignorance that he has copyrighted the phrase "Don't know much about" and made it the animating concept of this and two previous books. His Civil War is not for scholars or buffs, but for readers who would simply rather know something than nothing. Though the book lacks the visual and verbal poetry of Ken Burns's celebrated PBS series, Davis provides a lively, accessible survey of the events and personalities that shaped the great second act of our national history. Along the way, he delights in sharing facts that cut against the grain of pop wisdom: that the Emancipation Proclamation didn't really emancipate anybody, since it freed slaves only in states under Confederate rule, and that, because of deplorable sanitary conditions, more soldiers died of diarrhea than in combat. Of course, this is History Lite—Shiloh and Antie-tam are disposed of in something like five pages each—but it is by no means History Dumb. (Morrow, $25)
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