Civil War

Well I read this book recently and want to write about this book. This is a book titled 'The Civil war'. An Illustrated History by Geoffrey C .Ward with Ric Burns and Ken Burns.
As the title indicates, it is a book about American Civil War. Normally any history book is supposed to induce sleep. But this one is too good and if the history books prescribed in schools are anything like this no one will go to sleep in history class I suppose. I think you need a maturity to understand and appreciate history. That may be one of the reasons for history classes being a bore in school.
This book is illustrated with lot of pictures (photography was just then invented and quite a few photographs were taken at the war sites) and also maps and maps of placement of troops etc. I remember one of my teacher for my history MA telling us that history has to be studied with a background of geography, other wise it will be like it is hanging in mid air. This is so true and I could appreciate this concept while reading this book. These maps made it so realistic and everytime I read I referred to the maps for better understanding.
The main thing which struck me after reading was the great reconcilliation that has taken place after the war between the south which was called confederates and the north which was called the union. There may be some abberations here and there but by and large the reconcilliation and integration is complete.
The whole life style of the southern people changed and slavery which had a sanction of the constitution before the war which was fought for 4 years between 1861 to1865 was completely abolished by the end of the war. Here what I mean by complete abolition is the abolition constitutionally. In reality, it has taken more than 100 years for the blacks to get into direction of the main stream and the process of them joining in the main stream is still going on.
I could see from the book how many who fought on both sides had soft corner for the other side . They all met at the certain site of the wars after 50 years. (civil war is not a single war as it was fought in many many fronts and in many places). The people who had fought with each other and killed each other meet after 50 years as people who are civil to each other and as the citizens of the same country.
Like the author says before the civil war, the united states was mentioned as 'The united states are....' (meaning different states) becomes The United states is..... after the war. The number
of Americans died in this war was much more than the number of Americans died in the two wars put together.
Since anu lives in Baltimore which is just one hour from the capital Washington DC I could appreciate the book much more as I could visualize the many places mentioned in the book. The confederate capital Richmond is just 100 miles from the Union Capital Washington. While driving to North Carolina I could read many signs for places which I could identify with the civil war like Manassas the first place where the first shot was fired in the civil war.
It really made a wonderful reading that I could see a different perspective of America.