I actually don't know of a comprehensive overview I would personally sign off on. McPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom is well-regarded, but at least on the military side, there's a body of literature that offers a highly contrary analysis of the tactical framework, as well as reinterpretation of the consensus on a variety of key figures like McClellan, Stanton, Burnside, etc.

I think if I had to give you one book you were ever allowed to read about the U.S. Civil War, it would be In the Presence of Mine Enemies, by Edward Ayers. He collected all the information he could find on two counties, Northern and Southern (Franklin County PA and Augusta County VA), and put it in a digital archive you can access by searching Valley of the Shadow in google, and he used these sources to write a sort of twin history of the Civil War as it affected these two counties.

The two counties are in the same valley; they have the same soil, the same climate, the same ethnicities, the same religion. The only difference is slavery, but you can see the immense ripple effects its presence or absence had on the social, economic, and political events.

However, Ayers doesn't believe in inevitability. It's tempting to see the outcome as inevitable once you already know what happens, but what he tries to do is show how endlessly contingent history is. It's not just the decisions of the marble statue people that matter, it's the cascading effects of the decisions ordinary individuals make, and the uncertainty that unleashes in the narrative. He wants people to read the evidence forward, as someone living at the time (and thus moving forward through time) would experience it, rather than starting at the end of the story and working backward.

One thing he likes to hammer home is that in 1859, no reasonable person would have predicted that in the next six years, there would be a gigantic war that ended in the abolition of slavery. The prospects of the economic institution had never looked better. Up until April 1861, Augusta County stalwartly refused to endorse secession. In 1862, it seemed as though the Confederacy would be crushed, and the Union as it was would be restored without any kind of political revolution. The book cuts off the day before the Battle of Gettysburg, and it looks to most people like the South is going to win its independence, and bring forth a new nation, one that would fuse ancient slavery and modern technology into a great power.

There's a second volume due out in a couple years, but I highly recommend In the Presence of Mine Enemies as an overview/introduction.

Let me know if there are specialized topics you're interested in for more specific recommendations.