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House Divided
First published in 1947, this bestselling historical novel is cherished and remembered as one of the finest retellings of the Civil War saga—America's own War and Peace . In the first hard pinch of the Civil War, five siblings of an established Confederate Virginia family learn that their father is the grandfather of Abraham Lincoln. The family's story, and the story of their descendants, is presented in this tale that includes both soldiers and civilians—complete with their boasting, ambition, and arrogance, but also their patience, valor, and shrewdness. The grandnephew of General James Longstreet, the author brings to life one of the most extraordinary periods in history, and details war as it really is—a disease from which, win or lose, no nation ever completely recovers.
1514 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1947
57 people are currently reading
661 people want to read
About the author
Ben Ames Williams
115 books26 followersBen Ames Williams was born in Macon, Mississippi to Daniel Webster Williams and Sarah Marshall Ames on March 7, 1889. Just after his birth, he and his parents moved to Jackson, Ohio. Because his father was owner and editor of the Jackson Standard Journal in Ohio, Ben Williams grew up around writing, printing, and editing. In high school he worked for the Journal, doing grunt work in the beginning and eventually writing and editing. He attended Dartmouth College and upon graduation in 1910 was offered a job teaching English at a boy’s school in Connecticut. He telegraphed his father seeking career advice, but his handwriting was terrible and his father mistook “teaching” for “traveling” and, not wanting his son to become a traveling businessman, advised him not to take the job. Richard Cary says it later saved Williams from “a purgatory of grading endless, immature English ‘themes’” and propelled him “toward a career as one of the most popular storytellers of his time”. Right after graduation he took a job reporting for the Boston American.
Williams worked hard reporting for the local newspaper, but only did this for income; his heart lay with magazine fiction. Each night he worked on his fiction writing with the aspiration that one day, his stories would be able to support himself, his wife, Florence Talpey, and their children, Roger, Ben, and Penelope. He faced many rejection letters in the beginning of his career, which only drove him to study harder and practice more.
Williams was first published on August 23, 1915 in The Popular Magazine with his short story “Deep Stuff.” After that his popularity slowly grew. He published 135 short stories, 35 serials, and 7 articles for the Saturday Evening Post during a period of 24 years. After the Post took him, other magazines began eagerly seeking Williams to submit his fiction to their magazines.
Williams is perhaps most famous for creating the fictional town of Fraternity, located in rural Maine. 125 of his short stories were set in Fraternity, and they were most popular in the Post. Maine is also the setting for many of his novels.
Williams died of a heart attack in 1953.
Source: Wikipedia
Williams worked hard reporting for the local newspaper, but only did this for income; his heart lay with magazine fiction. Each night he worked on his fiction writing with the aspiration that one day, his stories would be able to support himself, his wife, Florence Talpey, and their children, Roger, Ben, and Penelope. He faced many rejection letters in the beginning of his career, which only drove him to study harder and practice more.
Williams was first published on August 23, 1915 in The Popular Magazine with his short story “Deep Stuff.” After that his popularity slowly grew. He published 135 short stories, 35 serials, and 7 articles for the Saturday Evening Post during a period of 24 years. After the Post took him, other magazines began eagerly seeking Williams to submit his fiction to their magazines.
Williams is perhaps most famous for creating the fictional town of Fraternity, located in rural Maine. 125 of his short stories were set in Fraternity, and they were most popular in the Post. Maine is also the setting for many of his novels.
Williams died of a heart attack in 1953.
Source: Wikipedia
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 52 reviews
August 18, 2011
Wonderful huge pot-boiler Civil War novel, far superior to Gone With the Wind. While the story is vast in scope, the large and involving cast of characters allowed the author to address many aspects of the American Civil War that most other fiction had ignored. I first read this book when I was in high school, and spent many years trying to track down my own copy. While it's certainly dated to some degree (written in 1947) it is still the best fictional chronical of the American Civil War I've ever read. Travis, Cinda, Brett, Faunt - darn it, now I have to go read it again!
April 16, 2012
This Civil War story was published in 1947; I found it on Amazon as part of its Rediscovered Classics (there are some really good books there!). It took me forever to read because it's 1500 pages long (it should have been split into a trilogy, though I don't know how)and I had several books to read for book group in the meantime.
It's an unromanticized portrayal of the Civil War through the experiences of a Richmond family. I've read quite a bit about the Civil War, but this time I learned a lot about how the war affected the daily lives of Southerners.
The author of the book is the grandnephew of General Longstreet, so Longstreet plays a prominent role in the book. The only time it bogged down was during the very detailed portrayal of the battle at Gettysburg.
If you're interested in the Civil War, you'll love this book.
It's an unromanticized portrayal of the Civil War through the experiences of a Richmond family. I've read quite a bit about the Civil War, but this time I learned a lot about how the war affected the daily lives of Southerners.
The author of the book is the grandnephew of General Longstreet, so Longstreet plays a prominent role in the book. The only time it bogged down was during the very detailed portrayal of the battle at Gettysburg.
If you're interested in the Civil War, you'll love this book.
March 10, 2018
This is my third reading of this book, 50+ years since my first two readings. This mammoth novel covers the years leading up to the Civil War, the actual war, and the immediate end of the war when Lee surrendered at Appomattox. Ben Ames Williams is a grandnephew of General James Longstreet, so a good deal of the war story centers around Longstreet and his perspective of battles and the war itself. The focal point of the story is about the family Currain who collectively own four plantations in Virginia and the Carolinas. Upon discovering that they are related to Abraham Lincoln, each member of the family reacts differently to the news, thus changing them forever. The book reflects the culture, society, social networks, politics, and differing attitudes about the war in great detail. Of special interest to Civil War afficianatos is the great detail on campaigns and battles, especially the Battle of Gettysburg. The author reflects the day to day life of Southern soldiers, the conditions, barriers, attitudes and thoughts, and most of all the actual battles. He is skilled at reflecting the sights, sounds, smells, and struggles of the soldiers fighting the war, leaving indelible marks on those who survived to fight another day or return home, permanently wounded in body and spirit. I was particularly fascinated by the author's description of his writing process in the years before computers.
May 25, 2015
Finishing this read on Memorial Day 2015, 150 years since the end of The Civil War is perfect timing. This is a five star read make no mistake.' House Divided 'is a historic compelling, extraordinary, informative, micro/macro soul searching book. I have been humbled. The author , Ben Ames Williams begins with defining the Currain family tree.
He then connect this family with the beginning of battles from Fort Sumter to Appomattox Court House. At times, this book was so descriptive about the battles, I had to take a break, before reading on. The Currain Famiy became
unbelievably alive by portraying all human emotions existing. Medically, this time in history did not yet know
about bacteria or viruses, sanitary precautions, impact of poor nutrition or deadly dysentery. Also note is
the technological advancements in the Civil War.
One of my favorite lines is from Lieutenant-General James Longstreet..."Well gentlemen.... The war is ended. It is time for us to ride to our homes and take up the harder task of peace.". pg. 1460
He then connect this family with the beginning of battles from Fort Sumter to Appomattox Court House. At times, this book was so descriptive about the battles, I had to take a break, before reading on. The Currain Famiy became
unbelievably alive by portraying all human emotions existing. Medically, this time in history did not yet know
about bacteria or viruses, sanitary precautions, impact of poor nutrition or deadly dysentery. Also note is
the technological advancements in the Civil War.
One of my favorite lines is from Lieutenant-General James Longstreet..."Well gentlemen.... The war is ended. It is time for us to ride to our homes and take up the harder task of peace.". pg. 1460
May 10, 2025
I like big books, and I cannot lie;
You other readers can't deny,
When it takes up space in your bookcase,
With a big spine in your face,
You get sprung!
General Longstreet would be spinning in his grave if he knew a book in which he's prominently featured shares review space with Sir Mix-A-Lot, even if it's to the most tangential degree. As a southerner who had ancestors in Virginia a couple of centuries before Longstreet was even born[1], I'm obligated to observe that anything that causes Mr. Longstreet to take a turn in his casket is peachy-keen by me. He may have been the best tactical general on either side of the conflict, but his name was mud in the South (and still is in most rural areas) after the war due to him joining the Republicans. I'm actually not that passionate about it, and... am I really going to say this?... I guess I am... He wasn't wrong... (And now several of those ancestors I mentioned are probably doing their own flips. Sorry various gramps and grannies.)
I'm not saying he was right either. I couldn't have done it. If I had lived through the Civil War as a Confederate, my butt-hurt self certainly wouldn't be helping Yankees make things onerous for my own people afterward. However, I can see where Longstreet was coming from on an intellectual level. We had lost, and the best way to heal the nation would be to work with the victors. The Japanese did this with us after WWII, and it worked to their advantage. We didn't, and things were ugly for a long time. In fact, we're still not completely healed, and Civil Rights for black people in the South didn't start until a century later. It might've happened sooner if we had adopted Longstreet's attitude, but Reconstruction was so harsh that Southerners by and large weren't going to have any part of it, and the whole thing backfired. The only thing the South had left after the war was its pride, and once that started getting stepped on... Well, you know how that goes.
Dammit, there I go, right out the gate. Never get me started on the Civil War. Maybe the rest of this will actually pertain to the book. I'll try my best, but I make no promises on the end result.
This book gets it right! The popular story about the Civil War is that the South was united, and the Yankees just got the best of them in the end, but that's not the case. The South did just as much to defeat itself as the Yankees did to beat them. Any confederacy is designed to fail since it can't force unity for the common good. The Articles of Confederation exposed this deficiency just after the Revolutionary War, but the South either forgot or ignored that. Since this story takes place in Richmond, Virginia, we get to see the feckless incompetence and corruption first hand, and examples of malfeasance in the Confederate government would fill up the rest of this review space. This book does a great job of showing how wretched conditions were for the South, especially for the common man. It was a rich man's war, but a poor man's fight fought over slavery, but the vast majority of the soldiers never owned a slave... And instead of rehashing matters thoroughly discussed in my Gone with the Wind review, I encourage you to see that if you're interested.
The amount of research Mr. Williams did for this is one of the most impressive things I've ever seen. In fact, the only thing I can think of that comes close to comparing with it is chapter 11 of The Picture of Dorian Gray which is insane. This is chock-full of anecdotes from the Civil War interspersed into the narrative, and I think all of them are true. Well, let me rephrase that. The veracity of some of the anecdotes may be debatable, but the fact that Williams has a source for them is not. I spot-checked a few, and I could always find something. A minor detail might've been altered to make one of the book's characters do the deed, but the deed was something that really happened. For example, at the Battle of Big Bethel, a Mrs. Tunnell warned the Confederates that the Yankees were coming, and Union Major Winthrop was killed there. In the book, one of the main characters witnessed the warning as well as the shot that killed the Major. It also referred to the only Confederate casualty, Henry Wyatt. There was a reference to the Richmond Theater Fire of 1811 and one about a boy climbing the Capitol building to pull down the Union flag the day Virginia seceded. These and a thousand other things really happened.
While the research is impressive, it isn't perfect. Since Richmond is my stomping grounds, and most of the book takes place there or in Central Virginia, I caught a few minor errors, mostly with spelling like "Mattapony" for "Mattaponi." Poor Burkeville gets slighted again by being spelled as "Burkville" here. (Grant messes this up in his Personal Memoirs by calling it Burkesville.) Fort Monroe is referred to as Fortress Monroe, but nobody calls it that, at least not now, and I don't think they called it that back then, though I could be wrong. One thing I'm not wrong about, though, is the spelling of Manakin, and this one is a double whammy. He refers to "Manikin Town." Not only did he misspell it, Manakin Town was a small settlement south of the James River in Powhatan County which ceased to exist a couple of decades before the Revolutionary War and was indistinguishable from the surrounding countryside by the time Fort Sumter fell. He meant just plain Manakin which is a village on the northern side of the James River in Goochland County. Both of them got their names from the Monacan Indians, a local tribe that mostly moved away once they'd had their fill of the new kids on the block. It's easy to see how Williams could get these minor details wrong, and only a local would even notice them.
Aside from those nitpicks, Williams does a masterful job of weaving history into the story, but that also causes a problem from a literary standpoint. Even though this is historical fiction, it reflects real life events, but real life never plays out the way an author would write it. The characters are made to fit actual events and surroundings, so thematic and other English lit elements aren't as good as they could be. Conversely, events in Gone with the Wind are molded around the characters, so it's a better story structurally. It's a subtle difference, and I might be wrong about all of it since I don't know jack about literary matters, but that's what crossed my mind when I was trying to figure out why GWTW had a better flow.
But make no mistake, this book was fantastic. I'm pretty sure I'll give it a reread one day, and since the thing is 1,514 pages long, that's really saying something. The character development for each of the main characters was great. We watch all of them change in greater or lesser degrees as the war progresses, and none of them is the same at the end of it as he/she was at the start. Some become better people, others go the other direction. Some fluctuate, but it's all believable. All of them deal with matters that rock their understanding of the world and the society they once knew. One starts out as a cad, becomes a decent person for a while, then goes back to his roguish, white-trash ways once the family finds out they're . That revelation causes another to turn into frockin' Josey Wales though he had been a pretty chill cat before then.
The book is very fair in presenting several Southern viewpoints including those for slavery, though it doesn't dwell on that. Had this been written today, a publisher probably would've forced Williams to include some more harrowing scenes regarding the slaves. Luckily this was written in 1947, and he was able to tell the story he wanted to tell without having to check off boxes for special interest groups, but that might be one of the reasons the book has fallen into obscurity. (Well, that and the fact that it's frickin' 1,500 pages long.) Civil War books from the southern perspective are no longer in vogue and haven't been for a few decades now. This shows several ugly sides of the South, but it doesn't do so from a moral high ground, and that might be the problem. Some of the characters have views that are deemed reprehensible to a 21st century audience, but the book doesn't; it lets the reader decide what to make of it. It doesn't preach to the reader like Harriett Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, and in spite of my love for Gone with the Wind, I'll admit its portrayal of the glorious South is heavy-handed and glosses over the South's deficiencies. Williams doesn't do that. He shows us what a grade-A fuck-up the whole shebang was from start to finish, but he does so without judgement, and I can't tell you how refreshing that is.
There is one rather ironic hiccup in the work. The entire story is told from the points of view of various members of the fictitious Currain family[2] except a 130 page chapter in the middle about the Battle of Gettysburg which features General Longstreet's POV. Williams was a grandnephew of Longstreet (which explains why he's presented in a much more sympathetic light than most people would've given him). I really feel like this is the story he wanted to tell, and he built another story around it. The problem is that it's just so out of place. Almost all the other battles occur off page and are told to other members of the family later. The format actually works really well. History nerds get a fix with a summary and a couple anecdotes, and the other story moves along. This is the only one we witness firsthand from start to finish with all the tactical maneuvers as viewed by a character. It seems odd that the most important battle of the war doesn't fit in with a story about the war, but there it is. It was like two stories trying to share the same book.
That doesn't mean I didn't like the chapter; far from it. Having visited the impressively preserved Gettysburg battlefield, and having done a presentation for said battle for my Civil War class in college, I could see all of it play out in my mind. The Peach Orchard. Devil's Den. The Wheatfield. Little and Big Round Top. Cemetery Ridge and Pickett's Charge. The whole thing was a comedy of errors on both sides, but nobody was laughing. Bodies piled so thick where they fell that you couldn't see the ground. A tree trunk a few feet in diameter hit with so many bullets that it fell over as if chopped with an axe. These images help to bring the battle home to a fellow. It looks like I'm getting started on a history lesson again, so I better move on.
I've hardly talked about the story itself, but I don't think I have to beyond what I've already said. Besides, it would take more space than I have to try to sum up everything they went through. I was invested in it the entire time, though. I was thrilled when one odious character finally got killed, and was disappointed when a couple others not only got away scot-free but ended up at the top of the shit heap, but life isn't always fair. I was conflicted about some characters who were pretty shitty but were also the manufacturers of their own misery, and I felt bad for the other characters who were doing the best the could and the hardships they endured.
As much as I loved the book, I'm not sure how much it would appeal to the average reader. This is kind of special to me for a few reasons. First, I enjoy reading about the Civil War. Second, this takes place where I live and I know most of the the roads, streets, buildings and other locations mentioned. Third, my ancestors lived through this, so there's a lot of family history here. Fourth, this was one of granddaddy's favorite books. He passed away 20 years ago, and I would love to have been able to discuss it with him. That's not a regret; we talked about a lot of things in the 27 years I knew him, and you can't cover everything in so short a time. Mama really liked the book too, and she gave me the copy I have for Christmas a couple of years ago. It's been decades since she's read it and she's forgotten most of it, but she plans to reread it, and we can discuss it then, though I'm afraid she was upset with me when I accidentally spoiled it for her by mentioning that the South lost the war. Anyway, I mention all this just to point out that I'm in a position to enjoy this more than most people for personal reasons, but it's still a great book if you like a good mix of history and literature and don't mind making a major time commitment to git-r-done. Check it out.
[1]: Plus a Cherokee line that was in Virginia since Lord knows when, way before there even was a Virginia. None of this is germane to the point I was trying to make, so I'm sorry I brought it up. Hopefully you quit reading before you got to this footnote and were spared this waste of time.
[2]: I stumbled upon the Currain family tree on genealogy.com, and... Jesus wept. Thankfully some commenter pointed out that whoever posted it was an idiot, though they were much more polite about it than I would've been. They simply told the poster he was wrong. This is why I don't trust any of those ancestry sites, and neither should you, because any Tom, Dick, or shithead can put whatever he wants up there.
You other readers can't deny,
When it takes up space in your bookcase,
With a big spine in your face,
You get sprung!
General Longstreet would be spinning in his grave if he knew a book in which he's prominently featured shares review space with Sir Mix-A-Lot, even if it's to the most tangential degree. As a southerner who had ancestors in Virginia a couple of centuries before Longstreet was even born[1], I'm obligated to observe that anything that causes Mr. Longstreet to take a turn in his casket is peachy-keen by me. He may have been the best tactical general on either side of the conflict, but his name was mud in the South (and still is in most rural areas) after the war due to him joining the Republicans. I'm actually not that passionate about it, and... am I really going to say this?... I guess I am... He wasn't wrong... (And now several of those ancestors I mentioned are probably doing their own flips. Sorry various gramps and grannies.)
I'm not saying he was right either. I couldn't have done it. If I had lived through the Civil War as a Confederate, my butt-hurt self certainly wouldn't be helping Yankees make things onerous for my own people afterward. However, I can see where Longstreet was coming from on an intellectual level. We had lost, and the best way to heal the nation would be to work with the victors. The Japanese did this with us after WWII, and it worked to their advantage. We didn't, and things were ugly for a long time. In fact, we're still not completely healed, and Civil Rights for black people in the South didn't start until a century later. It might've happened sooner if we had adopted Longstreet's attitude, but Reconstruction was so harsh that Southerners by and large weren't going to have any part of it, and the whole thing backfired. The only thing the South had left after the war was its pride, and once that started getting stepped on... Well, you know how that goes.
Dammit, there I go, right out the gate. Never get me started on the Civil War. Maybe the rest of this will actually pertain to the book. I'll try my best, but I make no promises on the end result.
This book gets it right! The popular story about the Civil War is that the South was united, and the Yankees just got the best of them in the end, but that's not the case. The South did just as much to defeat itself as the Yankees did to beat them. Any confederacy is designed to fail since it can't force unity for the common good. The Articles of Confederation exposed this deficiency just after the Revolutionary War, but the South either forgot or ignored that. Since this story takes place in Richmond, Virginia, we get to see the feckless incompetence and corruption first hand, and examples of malfeasance in the Confederate government would fill up the rest of this review space. This book does a great job of showing how wretched conditions were for the South, especially for the common man. It was a rich man's war, but a poor man's fight fought over slavery, but the vast majority of the soldiers never owned a slave... And instead of rehashing matters thoroughly discussed in my Gone with the Wind review, I encourage you to see that if you're interested.
The amount of research Mr. Williams did for this is one of the most impressive things I've ever seen. In fact, the only thing I can think of that comes close to comparing with it is chapter 11 of The Picture of Dorian Gray which is insane. This is chock-full of anecdotes from the Civil War interspersed into the narrative, and I think all of them are true. Well, let me rephrase that. The veracity of some of the anecdotes may be debatable, but the fact that Williams has a source for them is not. I spot-checked a few, and I could always find something. A minor detail might've been altered to make one of the book's characters do the deed, but the deed was something that really happened. For example, at the Battle of Big Bethel, a Mrs. Tunnell warned the Confederates that the Yankees were coming, and Union Major Winthrop was killed there. In the book, one of the main characters witnessed the warning as well as the shot that killed the Major. It also referred to the only Confederate casualty, Henry Wyatt. There was a reference to the Richmond Theater Fire of 1811 and one about a boy climbing the Capitol building to pull down the Union flag the day Virginia seceded. These and a thousand other things really happened.
While the research is impressive, it isn't perfect. Since Richmond is my stomping grounds, and most of the book takes place there or in Central Virginia, I caught a few minor errors, mostly with spelling like "Mattapony" for "Mattaponi." Poor Burkeville gets slighted again by being spelled as "Burkville" here. (Grant messes this up in his Personal Memoirs by calling it Burkesville.) Fort Monroe is referred to as Fortress Monroe, but nobody calls it that, at least not now, and I don't think they called it that back then, though I could be wrong. One thing I'm not wrong about, though, is the spelling of Manakin, and this one is a double whammy. He refers to "Manikin Town." Not only did he misspell it, Manakin Town was a small settlement south of the James River in Powhatan County which ceased to exist a couple of decades before the Revolutionary War and was indistinguishable from the surrounding countryside by the time Fort Sumter fell. He meant just plain Manakin which is a village on the northern side of the James River in Goochland County. Both of them got their names from the Monacan Indians, a local tribe that mostly moved away once they'd had their fill of the new kids on the block. It's easy to see how Williams could get these minor details wrong, and only a local would even notice them.
Aside from those nitpicks, Williams does a masterful job of weaving history into the story, but that also causes a problem from a literary standpoint. Even though this is historical fiction, it reflects real life events, but real life never plays out the way an author would write it. The characters are made to fit actual events and surroundings, so thematic and other English lit elements aren't as good as they could be. Conversely, events in Gone with the Wind are molded around the characters, so it's a better story structurally. It's a subtle difference, and I might be wrong about all of it since I don't know jack about literary matters, but that's what crossed my mind when I was trying to figure out why GWTW had a better flow.
But make no mistake, this book was fantastic. I'm pretty sure I'll give it a reread one day, and since the thing is 1,514 pages long, that's really saying something. The character development for each of the main characters was great. We watch all of them change in greater or lesser degrees as the war progresses, and none of them is the same at the end of it as he/she was at the start. Some become better people, others go the other direction. Some fluctuate, but it's all believable. All of them deal with matters that rock their understanding of the world and the society they once knew. One starts out as a cad, becomes a decent person for a while, then goes back to his roguish, white-trash ways once the family finds out they're . That revelation causes another to turn into frockin' Josey Wales though he had been a pretty chill cat before then.
The book is very fair in presenting several Southern viewpoints including those for slavery, though it doesn't dwell on that. Had this been written today, a publisher probably would've forced Williams to include some more harrowing scenes regarding the slaves. Luckily this was written in 1947, and he was able to tell the story he wanted to tell without having to check off boxes for special interest groups, but that might be one of the reasons the book has fallen into obscurity. (Well, that and the fact that it's frickin' 1,500 pages long.) Civil War books from the southern perspective are no longer in vogue and haven't been for a few decades now. This shows several ugly sides of the South, but it doesn't do so from a moral high ground, and that might be the problem. Some of the characters have views that are deemed reprehensible to a 21st century audience, but the book doesn't; it lets the reader decide what to make of it. It doesn't preach to the reader like Harriett Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, and in spite of my love for Gone with the Wind, I'll admit its portrayal of the glorious South is heavy-handed and glosses over the South's deficiencies. Williams doesn't do that. He shows us what a grade-A fuck-up the whole shebang was from start to finish, but he does so without judgement, and I can't tell you how refreshing that is.
There is one rather ironic hiccup in the work. The entire story is told from the points of view of various members of the fictitious Currain family[2] except a 130 page chapter in the middle about the Battle of Gettysburg which features General Longstreet's POV. Williams was a grandnephew of Longstreet (which explains why he's presented in a much more sympathetic light than most people would've given him). I really feel like this is the story he wanted to tell, and he built another story around it. The problem is that it's just so out of place. Almost all the other battles occur off page and are told to other members of the family later. The format actually works really well. History nerds get a fix with a summary and a couple anecdotes, and the other story moves along. This is the only one we witness firsthand from start to finish with all the tactical maneuvers as viewed by a character. It seems odd that the most important battle of the war doesn't fit in with a story about the war, but there it is. It was like two stories trying to share the same book.
That doesn't mean I didn't like the chapter; far from it. Having visited the impressively preserved Gettysburg battlefield, and having done a presentation for said battle for my Civil War class in college, I could see all of it play out in my mind. The Peach Orchard. Devil's Den. The Wheatfield. Little and Big Round Top. Cemetery Ridge and Pickett's Charge. The whole thing was a comedy of errors on both sides, but nobody was laughing. Bodies piled so thick where they fell that you couldn't see the ground. A tree trunk a few feet in diameter hit with so many bullets that it fell over as if chopped with an axe. These images help to bring the battle home to a fellow. It looks like I'm getting started on a history lesson again, so I better move on.
I've hardly talked about the story itself, but I don't think I have to beyond what I've already said. Besides, it would take more space than I have to try to sum up everything they went through. I was invested in it the entire time, though. I was thrilled when one odious character finally got killed, and was disappointed when a couple others not only got away scot-free but ended up at the top of the shit heap, but life isn't always fair. I was conflicted about some characters who were pretty shitty but were also the manufacturers of their own misery, and I felt bad for the other characters who were doing the best the could and the hardships they endured.
As much as I loved the book, I'm not sure how much it would appeal to the average reader. This is kind of special to me for a few reasons. First, I enjoy reading about the Civil War. Second, this takes place where I live and I know most of the the roads, streets, buildings and other locations mentioned. Third, my ancestors lived through this, so there's a lot of family history here. Fourth, this was one of granddaddy's favorite books. He passed away 20 years ago, and I would love to have been able to discuss it with him. That's not a regret; we talked about a lot of things in the 27 years I knew him, and you can't cover everything in so short a time. Mama really liked the book too, and she gave me the copy I have for Christmas a couple of years ago. It's been decades since she's read it and she's forgotten most of it, but she plans to reread it, and we can discuss it then, though I'm afraid she was upset with me when I accidentally spoiled it for her by mentioning that the South lost the war. Anyway, I mention all this just to point out that I'm in a position to enjoy this more than most people for personal reasons, but it's still a great book if you like a good mix of history and literature and don't mind making a major time commitment to git-r-done. Check it out.
[1]: Plus a Cherokee line that was in Virginia since Lord knows when, way before there even was a Virginia. None of this is germane to the point I was trying to make, so I'm sorry I brought it up. Hopefully you quit reading before you got to this footnote and were spared this waste of time.
[2]: I stumbled upon the Currain family tree on genealogy.com, and... Jesus wept. Thankfully some commenter pointed out that whoever posted it was an idiot, though they were much more polite about it than I would've been. They simply told the poster he was wrong. This is why I don't trust any of those ancestry sites, and neither should you, because any Tom, Dick, or shithead can put whatever he wants up there.
September 9, 2021
I have to admit that I was a tad intimidated when I began reading "House Divided"--it clocks in at 1,519 pages after all. If you are a fan of great literature, an in-depth story line, well developed characters, and thought provoking conflict stay with it though. I'm glad I did! Ok, now that disclaimer is out of the way.
Ben Williams introduces us to the world of the Currains. They are rich, powerful land-barons with plantations in Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina. Tony, Cinda, Travis, Tilda, and Faunt...along with their assorted children & spouses...make up the majority of the fictional story. Cinda and her husband Brett purchase a home in Richmond before the war starts, so much of the story focuses on Virginia's reluctance to secede, and then the impact the war has on her citizens. I found alot of food for thought in the descriptions of debate leading up to secession, and see many parallels to debates and divides that have occurred since then. Consider Faunt's cautioning statement "The North has been told so many things that aren't true, and so has the South, that we're beginning to believe them. When lies are repeated often enough even wise men begin to accept them. Most of the evil we believe about the North is probably as false as most of the evil they believe about us." A few weeks later Brett gives a similar sentiment. "There's been so much bitter, passionate talk, we're probably bound to come to blows. I wish more Southerners knew the North as I do, knew its power and capacities. They wouldn't be so ready to believe in our superiority. Nor so ready to hate Northerners. I suppose anyone who begins to be sure that he's a better man than his neighbor is just confessing his own ignorance; and probably it's out of ignorance and the feeling of superiority that goes with it that most wars arise."
Most people did not share those sentiments though, and so the politicians continued to feed the flames of hate and further divide the nation until the inevitable Battle of Fort Sumter ignited full blown war. Into that war marched most men aged 17-45. Ironically most of them (around 95%) had never owned a single slave. Many of them didn't have a clear concept of what they were fighting for. They just wanted to support their state and their neighbors. For each of the young men, there was a grieving mother at home, and Cinda gives poignant words to their fear. "Children grow up," she said. "We'd like to keep them sheltered and protected; but to do so would be to rob them of half of life itself. To hide, to hug safety, to spend nothing of yourself--a man who did that might continue to exist for a thousand years. But--he'd never live! To live is to strive and to venture and to win--or to lose. To live is to assume responsibilities when you should, to accept duty, to love. To earn your own respect and the love of those you love is to make yourself terribly vulnerable to loss and grief; but--its worth it, Brett Dewain."
Williams, in the midst of the horrors of war, does an excellent job of depicting love as well. He shows the long-lasting, grounding love of happily married people (Brett and Cinda), he shows energetic new love (Vesta and Tommy), he shows strained love (Travis and Enid), and he even explores forbidden love (Faunt/Mrs. Albion & Tony/Sapphira). He also talks of the love between mothers and their children, as well as the love siblings have for each other. It almost feels deliberate...the way Williams paints war in broad brush strokes, and then shows intimate personal relationships between various characters. He finally acknowledges this contrast on page 967. "By thinking of battle in terms of generals, the civilian shut his mind to the agonies of individuals; and as long as he never visited a battlefield, he could continue to do so. Longstreet wondered whether, if politicians were set to the task of cleaning up the debris of battle, hurrying to bury the dead men before maggots and beetles and rats and foxes and hogs devoured them, moving bodies which had swollen and burst after a day in the sun, they would be quite so ready to lead a people to war."
It doesn't take long (perhaps 12-18 months) for the valiant ideology which spawned the war to be replaced by the drudgery of day to day battle. The men became gaunt as they marched hundreds of miles, faced battle upon battle, and dealt with short rations. The women had to manage tasks they never thought of before (such as running a plantation, and balancing financial books) while also volunteering at food distribution centers, making bandages, and staffing hospitals for the wounded. They lost sight of why the war started, and doubted an end to the fighting would ever come. Trav pondered that "War was a disease, which just as smallpox sweeps a city sometimes swept a nation. War was a disease of the human heart, changing the heart's beat and pulse and all its functioning, making gentle men into murders, entering into the hearts of men to turn them mad. Diseases came from none knew where; men were stricken or not; they lived or they died. It was so with war, the worst disease of all." General Longstreet has a more specific idea of why they are still fighting though. He is incidentally the Great Uncle of Ben Williams, and his words have a clear warning for us today. "Lies are the tools of politicians." Longstreet spoke sternly. "Good tools, too; because you can never catch up with a lie. And a lie is usually more interesting than the truth, so it's listened to more readily. The politicians feed us lies till they persuade us we believe things we really don't believe at all. It's their talk, poured into our ears or thrown at us by the newspapers, that brought us into this war. People will always be easily led to war as long as they believe what they hear and what they read, instead of thinking for themselves. And of course the lie most easily believed is that they're better than other men. The abolitionists think they're better than we are, and we thinking we're better than they are. So we're all fighting to prove it."
That sentiment is the heart of "House Divided". Williams deftly showed us how *Americans*, many of whom were related, were led to believe there was an unreachable divide between them, and then bitterly fought for 4 years, while hundreds of thousands of young men died or were maimed to prove their side of the divide was right. He showed that often the ones who fight and die are not the ones who created the conflict, and aren't even the ones who stand to benefit. The saddest lesson of all is that since the ones who start wars don't generally fight as infantry, they never feel truly beaten....and so the cycle continues to this day.
I highly recommend this novel. Given 5 stars or "Perfect."
Ben Williams introduces us to the world of the Currains. They are rich, powerful land-barons with plantations in Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina. Tony, Cinda, Travis, Tilda, and Faunt...along with their assorted children & spouses...make up the majority of the fictional story. Cinda and her husband Brett purchase a home in Richmond before the war starts, so much of the story focuses on Virginia's reluctance to secede, and then the impact the war has on her citizens. I found alot of food for thought in the descriptions of debate leading up to secession, and see many parallels to debates and divides that have occurred since then. Consider Faunt's cautioning statement "The North has been told so many things that aren't true, and so has the South, that we're beginning to believe them. When lies are repeated often enough even wise men begin to accept them. Most of the evil we believe about the North is probably as false as most of the evil they believe about us." A few weeks later Brett gives a similar sentiment. "There's been so much bitter, passionate talk, we're probably bound to come to blows. I wish more Southerners knew the North as I do, knew its power and capacities. They wouldn't be so ready to believe in our superiority. Nor so ready to hate Northerners. I suppose anyone who begins to be sure that he's a better man than his neighbor is just confessing his own ignorance; and probably it's out of ignorance and the feeling of superiority that goes with it that most wars arise."
Most people did not share those sentiments though, and so the politicians continued to feed the flames of hate and further divide the nation until the inevitable Battle of Fort Sumter ignited full blown war. Into that war marched most men aged 17-45. Ironically most of them (around 95%) had never owned a single slave. Many of them didn't have a clear concept of what they were fighting for. They just wanted to support their state and their neighbors. For each of the young men, there was a grieving mother at home, and Cinda gives poignant words to their fear. "Children grow up," she said. "We'd like to keep them sheltered and protected; but to do so would be to rob them of half of life itself. To hide, to hug safety, to spend nothing of yourself--a man who did that might continue to exist for a thousand years. But--he'd never live! To live is to strive and to venture and to win--or to lose. To live is to assume responsibilities when you should, to accept duty, to love. To earn your own respect and the love of those you love is to make yourself terribly vulnerable to loss and grief; but--its worth it, Brett Dewain."
Williams, in the midst of the horrors of war, does an excellent job of depicting love as well. He shows the long-lasting, grounding love of happily married people (Brett and Cinda), he shows energetic new love (Vesta and Tommy), he shows strained love (Travis and Enid), and he even explores forbidden love (Faunt/Mrs. Albion & Tony/Sapphira). He also talks of the love between mothers and their children, as well as the love siblings have for each other. It almost feels deliberate...the way Williams paints war in broad brush strokes, and then shows intimate personal relationships between various characters. He finally acknowledges this contrast on page 967. "By thinking of battle in terms of generals, the civilian shut his mind to the agonies of individuals; and as long as he never visited a battlefield, he could continue to do so. Longstreet wondered whether, if politicians were set to the task of cleaning up the debris of battle, hurrying to bury the dead men before maggots and beetles and rats and foxes and hogs devoured them, moving bodies which had swollen and burst after a day in the sun, they would be quite so ready to lead a people to war."
It doesn't take long (perhaps 12-18 months) for the valiant ideology which spawned the war to be replaced by the drudgery of day to day battle. The men became gaunt as they marched hundreds of miles, faced battle upon battle, and dealt with short rations. The women had to manage tasks they never thought of before (such as running a plantation, and balancing financial books) while also volunteering at food distribution centers, making bandages, and staffing hospitals for the wounded. They lost sight of why the war started, and doubted an end to the fighting would ever come. Trav pondered that "War was a disease, which just as smallpox sweeps a city sometimes swept a nation. War was a disease of the human heart, changing the heart's beat and pulse and all its functioning, making gentle men into murders, entering into the hearts of men to turn them mad. Diseases came from none knew where; men were stricken or not; they lived or they died. It was so with war, the worst disease of all." General Longstreet has a more specific idea of why they are still fighting though. He is incidentally the Great Uncle of Ben Williams, and his words have a clear warning for us today. "Lies are the tools of politicians." Longstreet spoke sternly. "Good tools, too; because you can never catch up with a lie. And a lie is usually more interesting than the truth, so it's listened to more readily. The politicians feed us lies till they persuade us we believe things we really don't believe at all. It's their talk, poured into our ears or thrown at us by the newspapers, that brought us into this war. People will always be easily led to war as long as they believe what they hear and what they read, instead of thinking for themselves. And of course the lie most easily believed is that they're better than other men. The abolitionists think they're better than we are, and we thinking we're better than they are. So we're all fighting to prove it."
That sentiment is the heart of "House Divided". Williams deftly showed us how *Americans*, many of whom were related, were led to believe there was an unreachable divide between them, and then bitterly fought for 4 years, while hundreds of thousands of young men died or were maimed to prove their side of the divide was right. He showed that often the ones who fight and die are not the ones who created the conflict, and aren't even the ones who stand to benefit. The saddest lesson of all is that since the ones who start wars don't generally fight as infantry, they never feel truly beaten....and so the cycle continues to this day.
I highly recommend this novel. Given 5 stars or "Perfect."
November 18, 2022
My second massive war-drama of the year, this book takes place during the American Civil War, and it was an amazing read! My late grandmother had listed this book as her all-time favourite, and I can totally see why. It absolutely earns the title of "an American version of War and Peace".
The Currain family has a long and noble history of plantation working and slave owning, establishing themselves early on as a Southern family of means. As the widow Currain enters the last stage of her life, her five children, Tony, Faunt, Cinda, Tilda, and Trav, are all in line to inherit her massive properties (and the slaves to work them) that are scattered around various Southern States. However, when Abraham Lincoln becomes president and rumors spread of impending Southern secession, the five siblings, their spouses, and their children all become entangled in a web of war, corruption, romance, greed, and a secret that has the potential to destroy everything the Currain's hold dear.
This book smashed it out of the park for me. Over 1500 pages, and I was not bored for a moment! It takes you from the beginning of secession talks through to the end of the Civil War, all seen through the perspective of the Confederacy, centered in Richmond, Virginia. The detail involved is a true labor of love, and I felt like I learned more about the Civil War in this one novel than in all my grade school history classes combined. It covers culture, war strategies (and failures), politics, philosophy, and social struggles that blossomed in the South during this time, giving a very meaningful glimpse of an often watered-down story of some of the USA's darkest years.
The character development is FANTASTIC. Each chapter is told from a different character's point-of-view, most consistently cycling through the Currain siblings, spouses, and children to give a very broad perspective not just of the Civil War but also of intense and dysfunctional family dynamics, as well as an AMAZING view of how hardship can change a person and impact everyone around them. No one ends as they started, and I found it satisfyingly well-done.
The writing style is engaging, not overly descriptive nor too simple. I was fully sucked in from beginning to end, which is hard to do with a book of that length. I would have liked more maps, especially of Gettysburg and some of the smaller regions, as well as a timeline in order to help ground me, but otherwise I have no complaints! The overarching messages were so powerful. I loved what the author was trying to tell the modern reader about war, unity, and the need to see past ourselves to the humanity of others (and the fact that no one side is perfectly good or perfectly evil!).
Trigger warnings for: war violence and trauma, domestic abuse, suicide. There's also a lot of racism (obviously...it's told from a Confederate perspective) and racial slurs abound, however I think it stays true to what life was like for Black Americans during that moment of time and does not try to glorify slavery at all. Still, it could be uncomfortable to read if you're not prepared for it.
Overall, I hugely recommend this book, especially if historical fiction is your thing. The messages it has to give are hugely relevant to today's world, and I think it's valuable for the USA to reflect more on this period time, especially now, to make sure we learn from its lessons. Also, this would make a WILD tv show. Someone pick this up and bring it to life because it has something for everyone in it!
The Currain family has a long and noble history of plantation working and slave owning, establishing themselves early on as a Southern family of means. As the widow Currain enters the last stage of her life, her five children, Tony, Faunt, Cinda, Tilda, and Trav, are all in line to inherit her massive properties (and the slaves to work them) that are scattered around various Southern States. However, when Abraham Lincoln becomes president and rumors spread of impending Southern secession, the five siblings, their spouses, and their children all become entangled in a web of war, corruption, romance, greed, and a secret that has the potential to destroy everything the Currain's hold dear.
This book smashed it out of the park for me. Over 1500 pages, and I was not bored for a moment! It takes you from the beginning of secession talks through to the end of the Civil War, all seen through the perspective of the Confederacy, centered in Richmond, Virginia. The detail involved is a true labor of love, and I felt like I learned more about the Civil War in this one novel than in all my grade school history classes combined. It covers culture, war strategies (and failures), politics, philosophy, and social struggles that blossomed in the South during this time, giving a very meaningful glimpse of an often watered-down story of some of the USA's darkest years.
The character development is FANTASTIC. Each chapter is told from a different character's point-of-view, most consistently cycling through the Currain siblings, spouses, and children to give a very broad perspective not just of the Civil War but also of intense and dysfunctional family dynamics, as well as an AMAZING view of how hardship can change a person and impact everyone around them. No one ends as they started, and I found it satisfyingly well-done.
The writing style is engaging, not overly descriptive nor too simple. I was fully sucked in from beginning to end, which is hard to do with a book of that length. I would have liked more maps, especially of Gettysburg and some of the smaller regions, as well as a timeline in order to help ground me, but otherwise I have no complaints! The overarching messages were so powerful. I loved what the author was trying to tell the modern reader about war, unity, and the need to see past ourselves to the humanity of others (and the fact that no one side is perfectly good or perfectly evil!).
Trigger warnings for: war violence and trauma, domestic abuse, suicide. There's also a lot of racism (obviously...it's told from a Confederate perspective) and racial slurs abound, however I think it stays true to what life was like for Black Americans during that moment of time and does not try to glorify slavery at all. Still, it could be uncomfortable to read if you're not prepared for it.
Overall, I hugely recommend this book, especially if historical fiction is your thing. The messages it has to give are hugely relevant to today's world, and I think it's valuable for the USA to reflect more on this period time, especially now, to make sure we learn from its lessons. Also, this would make a WILD tv show. Someone pick this up and bring it to life because it has something for everyone in it!
November 28, 2007
I love these sprawling, generational sagas, and Ben Ames Williams is great for writing just that sort of tome. The family ends up on opposite sides of the Civil War and, though southern, has a tenuous connection to Abraham Lincoln that is fascinating to watch coming into play.
January 29, 2013
Good read. A classic, to promote to young adults, so they can reason the why,
to avoid war . . .
to avoid war . . .
January 25, 2022
Gah, I don't think the actual Civil War was as long as this book.
Author Ben Ames Williams forces us to follow the fortunes of the fictional Currain family of Virginia as war breaks out. While the men are involved in the conflict in various forms, they are never far enough away that they can't stop by for a visit and mansplain the war to the womenfolk. Therein lies my major complaint about this novel. I didn't care at all for Williams' format of storytelling which is basically one person telling another person what has been said and done by someone else. Any kind of important action (duels, deaths, battles and such) happen off stage, so to speak. The reader doesn't get to be an omniscient eyewitness and receives all the news second hand. This leaves us stuck with the Currains who are barely bearable. They can't even do scandal right.
Eventually we get to the battle of Gettysburg and I am convinced this is the real reason why Williams wanted to even write this behemoth. You can just tell the author devotes more of his time and attention to this one battle and finally the reader gets to be there as events unfold, not hearing about it days later. (Williams also allows us to trudge along in desperate retreat before an unrelenting Union army. But just when Lee is about to ride forth and meet with Grant to discuss terms of surrender, the reader is once again yanked back from the main attraction. Really, Ben? Really? You gonna do us that way after we stuck with you for hundreds of pages? Really?)
Author Ben Ames Williams forces us to follow the fortunes of the fictional Currain family of Virginia as war breaks out. While the men are involved in the conflict in various forms, they are never far enough away that they can't stop by for a visit and mansplain the war to the womenfolk. Therein lies my major complaint about this novel. I didn't care at all for Williams' format of storytelling which is basically one person telling another person what has been said and done by someone else. Any kind of important action (duels, deaths, battles and such) happen off stage, so to speak. The reader doesn't get to be an omniscient eyewitness and receives all the news second hand. This leaves us stuck with the Currains who are barely bearable. They can't even do scandal right.
Eventually we get to the battle of Gettysburg and I am convinced this is the real reason why Williams wanted to even write this behemoth. You can just tell the author devotes more of his time and attention to this one battle and finally the reader gets to be there as events unfold, not hearing about it days later. (Williams also allows us to trudge along in desperate retreat before an unrelenting Union army. But just when Lee is about to ride forth and meet with Grant to discuss terms of surrender, the reader is once again yanked back from the main attraction. Really, Ben? Really? You gonna do us that way after we stuck with you for hundreds of pages? Really?)
December 2, 2018
There are great novels about our Civil War: Andersonville by Kantor is the best I've read, The Killer Angels by Shaara is almost a docudrama of Gettysburg, and even Mitchell's Gone With the Wind is so dramatic in both writing and film as to demand attention. Crane's The Red Badge of Courage is such a deep look at the nature of fear and courage, and the vagaries of misunderstanding (I thought here of Dear Evan Hansen, oddly enough).
House Divided is good and long and worthy, but it is not one of these. It is outstanding in one way, however: It clarifies the details of the widespread war into meaning for the Virginia theatre. In touring battlefields (I've dragged my wife to scores, perhaps hundreds), never did I understand the connectedness of First Bull Run and eventually Malvern Hill, the conscription of southern troops in a nation founded on states' rights, Fredericksburg and eventually Wilderness, Spottsylvania, the Crater, and eventually the race to Appomattox. This novel was outstanding for teaching the course and possible strategies of the war.
I recommend the novel to anyone with the time to read a book that delves into the lives of a family undergoing the stresses of nearby war, the deaths and cripplings and corruptions. I liked the story, loved the history; Williams worked for many years on the book, and it shows.
House Divided is good and long and worthy, but it is not one of these. It is outstanding in one way, however: It clarifies the details of the widespread war into meaning for the Virginia theatre. In touring battlefields (I've dragged my wife to scores, perhaps hundreds), never did I understand the connectedness of First Bull Run and eventually Malvern Hill, the conscription of southern troops in a nation founded on states' rights, Fredericksburg and eventually Wilderness, Spottsylvania, the Crater, and eventually the race to Appomattox. This novel was outstanding for teaching the course and possible strategies of the war.
I recommend the novel to anyone with the time to read a book that delves into the lives of a family undergoing the stresses of nearby war, the deaths and cripplings and corruptions. I liked the story, loved the history; Williams worked for many years on the book, and it shows.
July 6, 2019
I wanted another Gone With The Wind, so I jumped on this. I, generally, love this author. This was no GWTW. It was very heavy with history, so much so, that it took away from the story. There was just too much detail and too many characters. I actually wrote notes to keep them all straight! Civil War history is very interesting, but I didnt want a history textbook, I wanted another GWTW. I wish the writer had spent more time on the fictional drama of the main characters. I felt their stories were rushed in a few pages here and there and the main bulk of the text was a very long history lesson. It took me four years to read this because I kept putting it down for months because it was too tedious. To compare, I read GWTW in two days...
July 26, 2024
I made it through 500 pages of this massive doorstop of a book, but just couldn't go on. Too bad.
The author provides great historical information and a lot for the reader to think about regarding the cause of the Civil War, the logistics of fighting, etc.
Unfortunately, that is sandwiched inside of tedious, repetitive, overly dramatic family scenes. The plot is littered with stereotypes and none of the characters feel three dimensional. I was uninterested in the lot of them.
Very little of the action takes place "on stage." Most of the interesting stuff is presented as oratory or menfolk briefing the women on what's been going on. Yawn.
Even still, probably, a good 3 star read for somebody with more staying power.
The author provides great historical information and a lot for the reader to think about regarding the cause of the Civil War, the logistics of fighting, etc.
Unfortunately, that is sandwiched inside of tedious, repetitive, overly dramatic family scenes. The plot is littered with stereotypes and none of the characters feel three dimensional. I was uninterested in the lot of them.
Very little of the action takes place "on stage." Most of the interesting stuff is presented as oratory or menfolk briefing the women on what's been going on. Yawn.
Even still, probably, a good 3 star read for somebody with more staying power.
June 3, 2020
This book really affected me - I have only had limited knowledge of the Civil War, and this book brought it home in all its horror. I skipped some of the details battle scenes but the overall sentiment of the Southern States prior to deciding to secede. Hard to understand the willingness to fight against impossible odds and where only a few had anything to gain by leaving the Union. The book is also interesting as a family chronicle and giving a nuanced view of the characters. I am going to do more reading of this important time in American History. Hard to believe we are only talking about 4 years.
December 3, 2023
Ben Ames Williams 1889-1953 was one of our most overlooked writers. The first of his novels that i read was "Leave Her to Heaven 1944, the film was made the next year 1945. "House Divided" 1947 is a massive Civil War Novel. I read it about a month ago,I thought it was a very good novel of the South both before the War and after. I give it four stars. It kept me turning the pages, over 1,000 pages plus. All I can say is that it is a compelling read.
August 24, 2018
I read this book for school and was not disappointed in the slightest. If you liked Gone with the Wind then you'll love House Divided. While the family dynamics can get confusing, you'll still enjoy reading about the characters, who are dynamic and likeable.
March 13, 2021
Absolutely huge, sweeping, historical fiction. First read this ages ago and really liked it. The genealogist in me enjoyed seeing the different branches of this multi-generational family diverging and reconnecting in surprising ways, over the backdrop of a bloody civil war and all the awfulness surrounding it.
July 15, 2021
Once my my all time favs. a classic I have reread several times... Love this author. ck out his book called
Come Spring set during Revolutionary war... has different approach... showing not every one was for the war.. many average folks dis not see how it should matter th them until it came to their door...
Come Spring set during Revolutionary war... has different approach... showing not every one was for the war.. many average folks dis not see how it should matter th them until it came to their door...
June 11, 2022
So, so long, but also so, so rich of information. It took me forever to read, but I wish everyone would because you FINALLY get the South's side of the Civil War, and you just learn so much about an important part of our history, which like all history, is often just told by the victor's perspective.
July 16, 2018
This has been one of my favorite books since I read it back when it was a fairly new novel. Complex, engrossing, it goes beyond adventure and into the realm of deep psychological study. How would you react to the knowledge that your worst enemy is actually a family member?
July 28, 2025
Just finished this amazing book about the civil war. Its 1519 pages went by so quickly that I kept racing to the finish, but didn't want it to end. Williams got it all - the emotions of the gentlemen classes, the poor whites and the slaves; the battles; the deprivations.
July 19, 2018
loved this booked, the history and the family drama often left me with my mouth open.
great classic
great classic
Want to read
June 25, 2020This book was on the New York Times best-seller list.
August 3, 2020
I love to read and this book by far is my most favorite. I highly recommend this author and most of all this book.
January 18, 2024
in deutsch gelesen
February 18, 2021
I am only at 10 or 15% right now, but I would highly recommend this book. It tells the story of the Civil War from a personal perspective...at this point the story is focused on a southern family (Currain) who totally sees the war as the beginning of the end for their society. The book stays close to the actual history of the era and how the south figured cotton would bail them out and England and France would help them out...not so quick!!! The superiority of the north was shown in its industrial base and manpower, but the war was truly a personal one.
Truly great book. I know I started to read it when I read Gone with the Wind, but never finished it. I loved the fact that the true story of the battles of the Civil War was incorporated fully around the fictional characters. The family was a fictional family but because the identity of Lucy Hanks' first lover, the one which apparently might have spawned A. Lincoln, was never positively known it led itself to be the line of Lincoln. The book portrayed the Civil War through the turmoils of this family and how the knowledge that Lincoln was a part of their blood played into the family. The idea that the war was fought by the poor for the rich is a timeless reason for war!
Truly great book. I know I started to read it when I read Gone with the Wind, but never finished it. I loved the fact that the true story of the battles of the Civil War was incorporated fully around the fictional characters. The family was a fictional family but because the identity of Lucy Hanks' first lover, the one which apparently might have spawned A. Lincoln, was never positively known it led itself to be the line of Lincoln. The book portrayed the Civil War through the turmoils of this family and how the knowledge that Lincoln was a part of their blood played into the family. The idea that the war was fought by the poor for the rich is a timeless reason for war!
July 4, 2019
I have read over a thousand pages of this book, so I think that's enough for a review. For the most part, I've enjoyed it, although I would never ever say it's as good as "Gone With The Wind". BUT.....two thirds of the way in, there is a 130 page chapter that relates, in great detail, The Battle of Gettysburg from the viewpoint of James Longstreet. Only a few of the book's characters make an appearance in this lengthy chapter, and those few only very briefly. Now I don't like reading accounts of battles. I have trouble really understanding battle tactics and troop movements, and a lot of trouble picturing topographical details as relating to battle strategy. And there is no suspense! Everyone already knows what the result of The Battle of Gettysburg was! Getting through those 130 pages was a real SLOG. But I did it, as I did want to finish the book, and can't stand skipping chapters or skimming anything. I know the author was a great-nephew of James Longstreet, and honestly, it started to feel like James Longstreet at The Battle of Gettysburg was what he really wanted to write about, and the book was just an excuse to write that one chapter. Other than that, it's been interesting enough, and gives a feel for what it was like to live through The Civil War, which is what I am reading it for. But I am deducting one star for that Gettysburg chapter.
******Also I HATE FAUNT. I HATE HIM SO MUCH. I am just waiting for him to die because I HATE HIM. Seems like he's going to die of sickness in his bed, but he deserves far worse than that. DIE FAUNT DIE.******
EDIT: Somebody asked, "How would you react to the knowledge that your worst enemy is actually a family member?" I started to type this in a comment, but then I thought I'd just edit my review:
Yes, how would you react? Unfortunately, we don't know, because the author of this book never tells us. The knowledge that their father was also the father of Abraham Lincoln's mother doesn't seem to affect Tony, Travis, or Tilda at all. Faunt goes off the deep end in regard to his hatred of the North and of Union soldiers, and we're left to surmise that this is due to his knowledge of his genetic relationship with Lincoln, but his thought processes are never explained.
Cinda has a personal meeting with Lincoln, but the meeting isn't even described! What a rip-off! She says, "I've seen Abraham Lincoln" the way you'd say, "I've seen God", yet later when Lincoln is assassinated, she says she's glad because she hates him. Why the turnaround? And why was she awestruck to begin with? We don't know, because we're not told. And when she was awestruck, how did the knowledge that they were related make her feel? Proud? Did she wonder if she could have inherited some of the greatness that Lincoln did? We don't know. We're not told.
This author had a good idea, as far as Southerners finding out that they are related to Lincoln, and it's entirely historically possible because it's not known who the father of Lincoln's mother was. But the author then did nothing with the idea. I'm docking it another star, down to three stars.
******Also I HATE FAUNT. I HATE HIM SO MUCH. I am just waiting for him to die because I HATE HIM. Seems like he's going to die of sickness in his bed, but he deserves far worse than that. DIE FAUNT DIE.******
EDIT: Somebody asked, "How would you react to the knowledge that your worst enemy is actually a family member?" I started to type this in a comment, but then I thought I'd just edit my review:
Yes, how would you react? Unfortunately, we don't know, because the author of this book never tells us. The knowledge that their father was also the father of Abraham Lincoln's mother doesn't seem to affect Tony, Travis, or Tilda at all. Faunt goes off the deep end in regard to his hatred of the North and of Union soldiers, and we're left to surmise that this is due to his knowledge of his genetic relationship with Lincoln, but his thought processes are never explained.
Cinda has a personal meeting with Lincoln, but the meeting isn't even described! What a rip-off! She says, "I've seen Abraham Lincoln" the way you'd say, "I've seen God", yet later when Lincoln is assassinated, she says she's glad because she hates him. Why the turnaround? And why was she awestruck to begin with? We don't know, because we're not told. And when she was awestruck, how did the knowledge that they were related make her feel? Proud? Did she wonder if she could have inherited some of the greatness that Lincoln did? We don't know. We're not told.
This author had a good idea, as far as Southerners finding out that they are related to Lincoln, and it's entirely historically possible because it's not known who the father of Lincoln's mother was. But the author then did nothing with the idea. I'm docking it another star, down to three stars.
July 18, 2010
house divided is an overly long-1500 pages- book about a family, 2 sisters and 3 brothers, living through the civil war in and around richmond for the most part. the family story and dynamic was interesting, wealthy gentry dealing with their downfall, how they viewed slavery, and what they took for granted. also, the book focused on some factors seldom dealt with regarding the souths defeat, and that is the speculators who made fortunes, the ineptitude of the politicians, and the poorly trained army. it seems that no southern white man would take orders from another white man, they were too proud to do so, and it lead to a lot of problems. that being said, the book was very unsettling to read because at least twice per page I would come upon a sentence with a prepositional phrase just plopped down where it did not belong. some polish friends of mine would laugh about their grandparents saying things like "throw your father down the stairs his hat", or "where the street car turns the corner around". the sentence structure is not quite that absurd,but it is very offputting. was the editor someone who has english as a second language? also I skimmed through much of the battlefied pages, I've read so much about them I felt I could skip them, just to get through this book,which is much too large for its light weight story
June 2, 2012
In my top 5 for historical fiction. Because it's based on a family in the south during the civil war, it does not end upbeat, but he's a great writer. That's why I have to find his sequel "Unconquered" about the reconstruction era.
I appreciate that he was a journalist before he was a novelist so he succeeded in showing the bigger scope of why, what and how decisions were made along the way and the public perception of them at the time.
Normally I get confused by a big cast of characters. Not this time. He made each character so strong that they stayed in their own orbit through all the plot turns and twists.
Because it was written in the late 1940s, he was able to talk to oldsters who were young during the era. He started writing the book because he found out that his great uncle was a general. As a result he was able to obtain a lot of primary source material. He also had volunteers going through personal diaries and old newspapers of the period. It took him 15 years to research it and 3 years to put it together. The richness of all that background material shows.
I appreciate that he was a journalist before he was a novelist so he succeeded in showing the bigger scope of why, what and how decisions were made along the way and the public perception of them at the time.
Normally I get confused by a big cast of characters. Not this time. He made each character so strong that they stayed in their own orbit through all the plot turns and twists.
Because it was written in the late 1940s, he was able to talk to oldsters who were young during the era. He started writing the book because he found out that his great uncle was a general. As a result he was able to obtain a lot of primary source material. He also had volunteers going through personal diaries and old newspapers of the period. It took him 15 years to research it and 3 years to put it together. The richness of all that background material shows.
December 20, 2007
Not only is this tome, clocking in at a respectable 1500+ pages, the longest book I’ve read, it is probably one of the most interesting and engaging books about the Civil War I’ve come across. House Divided is billed as a historical novel, centered on actual Southern family, set during the war betwixt the states. Ames combines two very important aspects of writing in a seamless manner. The factual technicality of this war, as told through actual locations, people and events, melds quite well with the fictional interactions, conversations and thoughts of the characters. While there is no absolute record of the Currain’s day to day thoughts and feelings, Ames’ 20 years of research of the surviving archival materials provides the foundation around which a very convincing story of loss, love, brutality and self discovery is constructed. I highly recommend this to anyone interested in good historical fiction.
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