International: The Men Who Wore the Blue

THE LIFE OF BILLY YANK (454 pp.)—Bell Irvin Wiley—Bobbs-Merrill ($6).

In November of 1861, Charles Barker of Massachusetts reported for his physical. The doctor "felt his collarbones" and asked: "You have pretty good health, don't you?" Volunteer Barker said yes, and he was in the Union army.

Destiny may have been more casual in those days, but she was just as determined to give a simple soldier an awful tough time. In The Life of Billy Yank, a brother volume to The Life of Johnny Reb (1943), Historian Bell Irvin Wiley recites the hard facts...