American scholarship is richer for this unique exercise. More important, the great community, . . . one again sorely beset by unsettled problems of sectional rivalry and world tension, can read this book with great profit. Too few historians put their talents at the disposal of society so effectively. - American Historical Review

A brilliant, straightforward summary of the background of America's favourite armchair war. So deceptively simple is [Craven's] exposition that the solid worth of the book sneaks up on the reader when, having finished it, he realises that the brief volume may be short on detail but is complete as a well-considered, authoritative statement of history. - Chicago Tribune

Never has he, or anyone else, analysed the growing sectional conflict in more graphic or understandable terms than in the present volume. - Civil War History