NO QUARTER The Battle of the Crater, 1864

In the 1864 Union campaign against Richmond in the Civil War, federal soldiers dug a tunnel under Rebel entrenchments near Petersburg and filled it with explosives. The huge hole the blast created gave rise to the title THE BATTLE OF THE CRATER. The details of the encounter purport to demonstrate the "jealousy, intransigence, incompetence, and cowardice of Lincoln's generals." The book also depicts how the abuse of African-American troops by both armies augmented hatreds that ruined the postwar reconstruction of American society. Narrator Dion Graham speaks the accents of both the North and South, giving his interpretation a skilled authenticity. However, he isolates phrases and clauses within sentences, separating them by dropping his voice in between. The stilted pauses compromise the continuity of the production. J.A.H. © AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine [Published: APRIL 2010]