“The Critic’s Notebook,” by the Editors

“The Critic’s Notebook,” by the Editors

Nonfiction: The Civil War, by Jeremy Black (St. Augustine’s Press): I would not ordinarily expect, in a book about the American Civil War, to see mentioned the eruption of Mount Dubbi in Eritrea, May–October 1861, the largest such documented on the continent of Africa. But then Jeremy Black is no ordinary historian, and his noting that the eruption may have affected American weather patterns in 1862 (wet spring, cold summer) is but one example o…