                 America's Civil War--A Nation Divided
                        Reviewed by Bob Garsson

        The American Civil War_actually The War Between the States_continues
to fascinate Americans nearly 130 years after it ended. Software Publishing
has managed to put together the story of that war in a manner that will
allow users to experience the events through sight and sound.
        The CD-ROM has something for everyone, whether you're a devoted
student of the war or a novice eager to learn more about the great conflict
that so bitterly divided the nation. There's more than one way to view the
information, depending on whether you want to see the events chronologically
or search for specifics.
        A "timeline" across the top of the screen goes from 1861 to 1866.
The timeline marker can be set anywhere and a timer can be set for slow,
medium or fast to access each event in the order in which it took place. If
the time is not used, one has the ability to do a search by event, script,
date, event name or by key word. Search criteria can go several levels deep
(see illustration) and the user can view such things as weaponry, tactics,
political actions and strategies in many ways.
        Maps are detailed and contain numerous icons that, when clicked with
the mouse, display the associated event. A click with the left mouse button
zooms in on the map and the right button zooms out. In some instances the
maps appear to be cluttered with an over-supply of icons, although this
probably results from the need to associate all the events of a day with
their location.
        Troop movements can be revisited through more than 100 maps
depicting everything from minor skirmishes to epic battles. The CD-ROM
contains more than 1,200 still photos illustrating life in the service and
outside the military. Some of the pictures are of the earliest images of the
war captured on film from the Matthew Brady collection. (See illustration)
Numerous video clips bring battlefields alive as one sees and listens to
realistic re-enactments. In addition to all this, there are scripts that
detail the war and related events and the database can be searched by
literally hundreds of attributes covering more than 2,300 separate events.
        Users will discover unusual facts, such as the fact that instant
coffee and aerial reconnaissance were both invented during the Civil War.
What's more, the war's last shot was not even fired in America and if you
thought "Wild Bill Hickock" was a figure of the old West, you might be
interested in knowing he as a Union scout.
        I've been to numerous Civil War sites_from the Carolinas to
Vicksburg, Miss., and from Gettysburg to Georgia. I found that looking at
the contents of this CD-ROM reinforced the accuracy of my memory and even
added some additional knowledge that I had not been aware of in my travels
over the years.
        If I have any fault to find with this product, it's the fact that
using it is not intuitive and the manual is skimpier than it ought to be,
making it more difficult and time-consuming than necessary to learn how to
navigate the five years of strife. Despite this shortcoming, however,
America's Civil War_A Nation Divided will provides many hours of education
for anyone with an interest in the events between 1861 and 1866.
        The CD-ROM requires Windows 3.1 with 4 megabytes of RAM, a 386SX16
or higher microprocessor, a CD-ROM drive with MPC Level 1 or higher, a hard
drive with 2 megabytes available, a 256-color VGA display and a mouse. A
sound card is recommended. The application uses Microsoft Video for Windows
and a runtime version is included.

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