DEVOURING HISTORY

By Sylvia Cooper

June 20, 2015

The erudite Richard Noegel e-mailed to ask me to mention a book Tom Robertson has written. I asked whether he was referring to the Tom Robertson of Cranston Engineering.

"Yes, it is the same Tom Robertson," Richard responded. "We grew up across the street from each other on Williams Street, just off Walton Way, a block from the college campus.

"Anyway, this book is first-rate scholarship and is alternately tear-jerking and 'LOL funny!' I've finished about half of it (got it yesterday and expect to finish it tonight), and I must say it is one of the most readable and engaging books I've read in some time, including The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, which I read in one sitting last month (also highly recommended, by the way).

"Tom (and his sisters, Celia and Catherine) have done a first-rate job of editing, illustrating, and 'fleshing out' (by means of copious and in-depth footnotes as well as a Prologue) the diary of their great-great-grandfather Francis Marion Robertson, M.D., in which he chronicled his experiences during the last three months of the War to Prevent Southern Inde?pendence, as Dr. Clyde Wilson calls it.

"It takes the reader 'through many dangers, toils and snares' as well as a slew of emotions. It is really good! Mostly set in the Carolinas, but it has a good deal of local Augusta interest, too. It is titled Resisting Sherman. Now who could resist such a title? Sherman, probably, but I still say that everybody should read it."