The Training Ground: Grant, Lee, Sherman, and Davis in the Mexican War,…

Themes: military schools, war, brotherhood, manifest destiny

Another great read. Features a few great men, met on a battlefield - William Tecumseh Sherman, Ulysses S. Grant, Robert E. Lee, Abraham Lincoln, Jefferson Davis. Except that the battlefield is the Mexican-American War, and they were all on the same side.

The book starts with their education in West Point, the first American military academy, which provided then and now a first rate education, free of charge, for those who are lucky enough to get in.

I won't go into the whole book, but if you are a student of the Civil War, a Texan, or a history buff, you need to find a copy of this book. 4.5 stars. ( )

This is a book drawn from printed sources telling of men in the Mexican War who later became famous in the Civil War. It does not pretend to be a history of the Mexican War, but tells of a lot of incidents in that war. I did not find it too interesting, since it does not really seek to instruct but merely relate events, often in the words of the people who were on the scene. It does include the text of Abraham Lincoln's Spot Resotuion, which is something I had never seen before. ( )

This is a very interesting and highly readable book about a period in American history I knew little about. Grant, Lee, Sherman, Longstreet, Meade and a host of future Civil War generals are revealed. Jefferson Davis, the future president of the Confederacy, is most extensively covered as the leader of a brigade of fearless, hard drinking Mississippi volunteers. All were men of great courage. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in military and American history, ( )