Nigel Hamilton is one of America’s least conventional and most interesting historians. His landmark, three-volume study of Franklin Roosevelt’s military leadership, “FDR at War,” offers extraordinary insights into the battles between American and British military leaders during World War II and makes a strong case that Roosevelt was a better strategist than Winston Churchill. His “American Caesars,” a series of short biographies of the American presidents from FDR to George W. Bush, provides an astonishing amount of insight and information in easily digestible form.
In his latest book, “Lincoln vs. Davis: The War of the Presidents,” Mr. Hamilton analyzes the first two years of the American Civil War. The story of America’s national epic has been recounted many times. Mr. Hamilton manages to keep his eye on the larger strategic questions even as he probes the day-to-day shifts in the military, diplomatic and political realities the two leaders scrambled to grasp. The book offers insights that will surprise even readers who know their Civil War history in depth.
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