Effete Liberal Book Club

A couple of updates. Here's our schedule going forward for the Battle Cry of Freedom reading group, put together by Michigan_Commenter:

July 6: Chapters 7 and 8

July 13: Chapters 9 and 10

July 20: Chapters 11 and 12

July 27: Chapters 13 and 14

August 3: Chapters 15 and 16

August 10: Chapters 17, 18 and 19

August 17: Chapters 20 and 21

August 24: Chapters 22 and 23

August 31: Chapters 24, 25, and 26

September 7: Chapters 27, 28, and Epilogue

A couple of other things:

1.) I'm thinking that it's worth restricting the discussion to people who've read or are reading the book. There are Civil War threads aplenty here, and Open Threads daily. So we don't lack a place for those who just want to talk shop about the War. But I want to restrict this to those who are reading, so we can focus the discussion and debate.

2.) I've been extremely encouraged by the past couple weeks. It says a lot about what's possible on the net with a good group. I have a few random ideas about where we might take this over this in the future. The Odyssey is out there. But I think, to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the onset of the War, it might be cool to pick six books and knock them out. 

I'd like to turn things up a notch and ask that anyone participating in that group to have read BCOF, watched Ken Burns' doc, and listened to David Blight's series of lectures. Those three works form the foundation of so many of our conversations. The hope would be that by this time next year we wouldn't be addressing the same questions, that we'll be pushing deeper and further.

I'd very much like to read a good biography of Lee and maybe Longstreet.