I Like Big Books and I Cannot Lie

With apologies to Sir Mix-A-Lot.

So in addition to Understanding the Linux Kernel, I'm also reading The Civil War: A Narrative, by Shelby Foote. Here's some impressions I have formed so far:

• A general's own newspaper editors and politicians are probably his worst enemies. Few things are more valuable in a military campaign than a free hand and the privilege of making his own professional assessment; robbed of these two things by the media and the government, his success becomes failure, his defeat becomes disaster, and his victory becomes impossible.
  
• The morale of the troops counts for a lot.
• Making your own reconnaissance personally counts for a lot.
• Von Clausewitz was right: The best time to utterly destroy your enemy is immediately after defeating him in battle, as he is retreating in disarray.
• Von Clausewitz was also right: The hardest thing to do in battle is pursue and destroy the enemy, when you are in disarray immediately after defeating him.
• The Civil War was essentially a war of Generals. Thousands of soldiers, but only a few personalities in a position to guide the course of the battle.
  
• I found it interesting to learn that all the professional Generals had trained together at West Point, and many of them--along with many of the amateur generals in the war--were veterans of the recent war with Mexico.
  
• With the same training, and the same experience, the war seems to have hinged greatly on the individual personalities of the Generals involved: Who had better learned the lessons of the classroom and the battlefield. Who could better understand and exploit the situations that confronted him. Etc.
• Ironclads freakin' rock.