For armchair Civil War buffs (is there any other kind?), 2014 is the last full year of getting your “Civil War Sesquicentennial on.” This is especially a big event here in Georgia since it is the 150th anniversary of Sherman's campaign against Atlanta, which began in May,1864 and followed by his March to the Sea, which ended with Union capture of Savannah in December, 1864. As part of the ongoing celebration I have been thumbing through some book possibilities: B.H. Liddell Hart's biography of Sherman, Sherman's March to the Sea 1864 by David Smith, E.L. Doctorow's The March, Barry Brown and Gordon Elwell's excellent Crossroads of Conflict: A Guide to Civil War Sites in Georgia (reviewed here) and a recent addition to my library, The Devil's Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce.
Bierce fought at Shiloh, Chickamauga and was under Sherman's command when he was severely wounded at the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain in July, 1864. According to Drew Gilpin Faust's The Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War, (a Book Shopper Top Book of 2010) Bierce had the distinction as “the most significant and prolific American Writer actually to fight in the Civil War.”
Although he did write fiction, “Bitter” Bierce is best known for his caustic wit, which was prominently displayed in The Devil's Dictionary, a collection gleaned from his newspaper columns written between 1881 and 1906. The first edition published in 1906 was entitled The Cynic's Word Book and a more complete edition which became The Devil's Dictionary with over 1000 entries, was published in 1911, a few years before Bierce's mysterious disappearance in Mexico in 1914. (100th Anniversary!)
I have been thumbing through an abridged edition of The Devil's Dictionary published in 1979, which includes illustrations by J.C. Suares (1942 -2013), whose artwork graced the opinion pages and book reviews in the New York Times for years (and many other publications too). It is impossible to know which quotes best embody Bierce's work, so I will share a few pairings of scanned Suares drawings with some quotes and let you decide whether to join the Bierce jubilee.
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