Air Date: 010606
Subject: Richard P. McMurry: Toward a New Civil War Paradigm
Guest: Richard P. McMurry
Summary: Dr. Richard P. McMurry, author of The Fourth Battle of Winchester and Two Great Rebel Armies, presents a fresh approach to Civil War history.
Brett’s Summary: Richard McMurry believes the West has not been studied nearly enough. He thinks it was the most important theater of the war in the sense that the South lost the war there. His book The Fourth Battle of Winchester spends a great deal of time setting up a counter-factual concerning Lee’s army defeating Grant in 1864 and ending up back on the Rappahannock River line by the end of the year, with the war eventually ending when Sherman captures Richmond from the South. I’ve read McMurry’s Two Great Rebel Armies, in which he compares the Army of Tennessee and the Army of Northern Virginia. McMurry makes the case for several interesting ideas, including the need for a leader in the West in whom Jefferson Davis had trust and felt he could support, and Braxton Bragg as an underrated general.
Civil War Talk Radio airs most Fridays at 12 PM Pacific on World Talk Radio Studio A. Host Gerry Prokopowicz, the History Chair at East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina, interviews a guest each week and discusses their interest in the Civil War. Most interviews center around a book or books if the guest is an author. Other guests over the years have included public Historians such as park rangers and museum curators,wargamers, bloggers, and even a member of an American Civil War Round Table located in London, England.
In this series of blog entries, I will be posting air dates, subjects, and guests, and if I have time, I’ll provide a brief summary of the program. You can find all of the past episodes I’ve entered into the blog by clicking on the Civil War Talk Radio category. Each program should appear either on or near the date it was first broadcast.
Check out Beyond the Crater: The Petersburg Campaign Online for the latest on the Siege of Petersburg!
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