Books: The Year of Decision

A STILLNESS AT APPOMATTOX (438 pp.) —Bruce Callon—Doubleday ($5).

Bruce Catton is a journalist (the Nation) who has spent three years making the Civil War sound as fresh and exciting as if it had been fought yesterday. In A Stillness at Appomattox, he ends the story of the Army of the Potomac that he began with Mr. Lincoln's Army and continued with Glory Road. Once again, without stinting the strategies of the generals, he digs into regimental histories and private diaries to create a lively sense of the common soldier performing his uncommon chore...