The American Civil War (Videobook)

Full of inaccuracies
I got this set at Sam's Club for ten bucks and thought it would be some cheap educational entertainment. I was wrong.
The first half an hour or more is an overly drawn out history of slavery in the America's and much more than was needed to set the stage for war.
I've only watched the first two DVD's and don't know if I will waste my time on the rest. I don't understand how they can spend 15 minutes giving a detailed account of the Battle of Mill Springs but only a minute or so on Shiloh.
My biggest problem is with unforgivable historical mistakes. At first I wasn't sure. There would be little things I would hear and think, is that right? I wasn't absolutley sure until they continually labeled the Battle of Perryville as happening on October 4th 1862 when I knew for sure it was the 8th. It validates the questions I had on the accuracy of the account of Antietam, Perryville, and Fort Donelson. I really don't care enough to go back and double check. This is just a poorly...

Amateur Video
If you find it hard to believe that a 5 DVD set would cost less than $20, you'll learn why when you watch the first DVD. The visual portion consists mainly of spliced scenes from old movies, a wholly inappropriate way to present history. The narrative is informative if you are new to the topic, and the text contains a few moving moments, most notably when they imitate Ken Burns method of reading eyewitness accounts, but the program lacks a compelling dramatic structure, making the overall result unsatisfactory.

Adequate, but that is all.
This inexpensive three DVD set tries mightily to clone Ken Burns' masterful THE CIVIL WAR, but it falls far short. Made up partly of still graphics with voiceover recitations of wartime reports and correspondence and partly of filmed reenactments, THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR definitely will hold the viewer's interest, but it breaks no new ground at all in presenting the Civil War in word and image. Everything presented here has been presented elsewhere, and generally with better quality.

Beyond the obviously low budget with which the producers had to contend a number of irritating historical errors have crept in to this documentary. When discussing historical figures, a portrait of the named person generally appears onscreen. In the case of Gideon Welles, U.S. Secretary of the Navy, his name is consistently misspelled "Wells." This is an example of basic fact-checking laziness, and is really intolerable. Worse yet, after the Battles of Gettysburg and Vicksburg (July 1863) the...

Click to Editorial Reviews