John Ransom's Diary

Union prisoner of war John Ransom filled several books with his accounts of life in Andersonville, where 13,000 prisoners died, and other Confederate prison camps. David Thorn reads those accounts with a genteel calmness, even when recounting the most horrible experiences--a stint on a brutal chain gang, the uncertainty of coping with illness, or the suspense of watching a prisoner play dead to make his escape. At times Ransom seems astonished to note that prisoners would kill for a ration of bread or amused by "wormy and musty" bean soup, which he imagines as coming from some cookbook's "new edition." Thorn's consistency helps tie together an account that, from circumstances, rambles at times but amply preserves a record of war's inhumanity. J.A.S. (c) AudioFile 2001, Portland, Maine