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Engrossing is spot on. It was the first work of history I read that didn't have a bit of dusty academia about it, but was thoroughly engrossing from the first page to the last. It must be well over twenty years since I first read The Civil War and in that time I've never found a similar work that has bettered it in the readability department, and only a handful to equal it. Add to that its all-encompassing nature and I can't think of any work that more deserves the term definitive, at least among books written for general readers, rather than those aimed only at academics.
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