![]() ![]() Through a series of dramatic vignettes, Doctorow reveals the family lives of many of these marchers, creating background and stimulating the reader's interest in the characters' futures. ![]() Doctorow, in his absorbing novel of this march, focuses on all the marchers-their varied interests, conflicts, fears, and goals-instead of focusing on battles and army maneuvers, creating a powerful and panoramic vision of how civilians, as well as soldiers, responded to the devastation of this terrible war. It is an immense organism, this army, with a small brain."Īs the huge Union Army of General William Tecumseh Sherman burned its way from Atlanta to the Carolinas in 1864 - 1865, it was accompanied by a motley group of freed slaves, entrepreneurs, the dispossessed wives and children of landowners, and even a few turncoats, all of whom saw this army on the march as their protection from the hostile unknown. It sends out as antennae its men on horses. ![]() It is tubular in its being and tentacled to the roads and bridges over which it travels. "Imagine a great segmented body moving in contractions and dilations at a rate of twelve or fifteen miles a day, a creature of a hundred thousand feet. ( Jump down to read a review of The Waterworks ) ( Jump down to read a review of Billy Bathgate) ( Jump over to read a review of Homer & Langley) ( Jump over to read a review of Andrew's Brain) ![]()
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