Reading these reviews about Battle Cry for Freedom gave me great anticipation for the story and facts behind the civil war. In considering how I will be approaching the reading, I plan to take care to read all the footnotes associated with individual passages. From the books high praises I can tell it will be informative and truthful about all aspects of the war. It seems to me that most of the negative reviews were done by very intense history lovers who want more information than your average reader. There was also some comments about the writes personal bias affecting the facts. I think that it is incredibly hard to be completely impartial to any story. Having not read the whole book myself its hard for me to know where I stand. But I feel like I can trust myself to see if there is any bias in the book. I'm not really worried about the writers personal bias crating an discrepancy in historical facts. For the most part, the book has been praised for being factual and correct in the building of affairs the surrounded the civil war.

In regard to what review I trust the most, I have to say I take all of them with a grain of salt. If I had to choose one that was the most honest it would have to be the review done by the New York Times. I find the credible published reviews tend to be the most impartial when discussing the facts. However, I have always been interested in what the general pubic has to say about books through reviews on amazon. When I see that the majority of the readers really enjoyed a book it helps reinforce my belief that they might be right. In the end I don't know what their motives were behind their review or what information they were seeking in the book so I always try to trust my gut.

I think for this class the book chosen in perfect. Even if there is any bias I don't think it will take away from the information offered. Most of the review were very positive in regards to its accuracy and ability to be understood so that anyone can read it and learn form it. So I'm relativity excited to see what secrets it holds about our nations history.