ENCOUNTERING THE ELEPHANT.

Civil War soldiers referred to combat as "seeing the Elephant" and that reference arises in Shelby Foote's Shiloh, although there might be a reason he frames his novel as letters home from six men, three Rebels (Johnston's staff, Mississippi, and Forrest's cavalry) and three Federals (Ohio, Minnesota, Indiana) as, like the six blind men of Indostan, each encounters a different bit of the Elephant.  I'll try to keep Book Review N^o. 13 shorter than the Gettysburg Address.  It's a novel.  Mr Foote captures the Elephant as seen by his protagonists.  You want the larger view, the novel version is A Blaze of Glory, and the heavy analysis is in The American Civil War: A Military History and Shiloh and the Western Campaign of 1862.  You'll better understand the bits of the elephant each protagonist sees with at least a working knowledge of what went right and wrong at Shiloh.

(Cross-posted to 50 Book Challenge.)