In 291 brisk, fact-stuffed but engaging, thought-provoking pages, A Day in September by Stephen Budiansky examines how ill-prepared we as a nation were for war, but more significantly, what we learned and how those advances led to better military training, rapid improvements in battlefield medical care and the beginnings of a reconciling of the differences in North and South society, values and beliefs.
Some key American institutions at the outbreak of the Civil War were astonishingly primitive and Antietam revealed just how bad. Pre-Civil War, for example, most graduates of the U.S. Military Academy were well-schooled in math and engineering, much less so in military tactics.
Many soldiers lacked even rudimentary training such as target shooting. Militias often behaved like fraternal organizations or a mob, Budiansky writes.