On 2009-07-29 Aden Zydo, Atlanta, GA USA wrote: This book is a good introduction to the Mexican War for those who are relatively new to the subject matter, as I was. You will come away feeling you know about the events of the war. I was a little dissapointed, however, in the relative lack of political context around the war. The author injects little snippets here and there of the political context, but it is very limited and fragmented. And, what there is tends to focus more on the personal fueds between and among generals and politicians, which is mostly unnecessary and distracting.
There are some very interesting political and cultural questions surrounding this ´small´ war that have enormous implications. For example, the clear connection between expansionism and the growing slavery dispute between north and south. What about the extraordinary fact that it was at heart a war of conquer and conquest of territory? What of the political debate between Democrats who wanted to annex all of Mexico to the U.S. and Whigs who were against the acquisition of any new territory at all?
Eisenhower gets fairly detailed on individual military battles and the lead-up to those battles, and he is quite good at this. But, he could have removed most of the unnecessary information on personal squabbles and replaced it with more substantive political context.
My other main criticism is that he seems to miss some great opportunities to delve into the ground-level conditions of the war. He makes the very interesting statement that the casualty rate of this war was greater than any other U.S. war before or since, including the Civil War. That´s a profound fact. But, he fails to expand on that and really give the reader a sense of this collective experience on the troops. In this book the brutality and hardship of the war seem trivial. There´s no hard-hitting prose to make it really hit home.
Aside from my significant gripes with the book, it still is a good overview of the war itself. It was entertaining and interesting enough keep the pages turning, and by the end of the book I was glad to have read it. Three Stars.. And summed up by saying Needs a Little More Context. Currently So Far from God: The U.S. War With Mexico, 1846-1848 has an overall rating of 8 over 10.
So Far from God: The U.S. War With Mexico, 1846-1848 can also be found in the following searches:
University of Oklahoma Press claimed The Mexican-American War of the 1840s, precipitated by border disputes and the U.S. annexation of Texas, ended with the military occupation of Mexico City by General Winfield Scott. In the subsequent treaty, the United States gained territory that would become California, Nevada, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, and parts of Wyoming and Colorado. In this highly readable account, John S. D. Eisenhower provides a comprehensive survey of this frequently overlooked war.
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