last reads

New Arrival: • Five or Ten Minutes of Blind Confusion: The Battle of Aiken, South Carolina, February 11, 1865 by Eric J. Wittenberg (Fox Run Pub, 2018). For a long time, Civil War readers interested in the closing months of the war in the Carolinas had little to take in beyond John Barrett's Centennial-era classic The Civil War in North Carolina. This changed in a big way just over twenty years

New Arrival: • The Union Cavalry and the Chickamauga Campaign by Dennis W. Belcher   (McFarland, 2018). With now four related studies under his belt, Dennis Belcher is rapidly becoming one of the leading authorities on the mounted forces (in particular the Union cavalry) that operated in the Confederate heartland during the Civil War. Though I didn't have the chance to read his biography of

Regular readers know that I frequently complain about how the 1862 Peninsula Campaign and the Seven Days fighting continue to be neglected in comparison to other eastern theater campaigns of similar stature. My immediate reaction to seeing early notice of The Vermont Brigade in the Seven Days: The Battles and Their Personal Aftermath by Paul G. Zeller (McFarland, 2019) was "Great!," but then I

[The Last Siege: The Mobile Campaign, Alabama 1865 by Paul Brueske (Casemate, 2018). Hardcover, maps, notes, appendices, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:xxiii,185/278. ISBN:978-1-61200-631-4. $32.95] Involving 45,000 Union troops opposed by perhaps little more than 8,000* Confederate defenders, the 1865 Mobile Campaign was a major late-war military operation with considerable drama that

New Arrival: • Confederate Prisoners at Fort Delaware: The Legend of Mistreatment Reexamined   by Joel D. Citron (McFarland, 2018). It's a certainty that Civil War POW camps were not pleasant places to pass the time until release through either exchange or war's end, and ever since accusations have flown back and forth over whose prisons were worse in their treatment of those held there. Books

As much as I like Ninety-Eight Days (UT Press, 2000) from the late geologist Warren Grabau (it's my second favorite Vicksburg Campaign book after the Bearss trilogy), the innovative promise of the "geographer's view" aspect of Grabau's campaign study ended up being pretty limited in scope (or at least that's what I recall). Overall, while I appreciated its soil analysis and other "topographic and

New Arrival: • General Lee’s Immortals: The Battles and Campaigns of the Branch-Lane Brigade in the Army of Northern Virginia, 1861-1865 by Michael C. Hardy (Savas Beatie, 2018). In his recent magazine review of the hardcover first edition of Hardy's General Lee’s Immortals, the elder Krick, who has forgotten more ANV sources than anyone else has ever known about in the first place, delivered

I've been noticing that regimental resolutions have been popping up more often in the current scholarship as featured primary sources. Published in newspapers and seemingly aimed primarily at publicly reminding those at home and across the country of the soldiers' resolve on a variety of weighty (and often controversial) issues related to the war, these resolutions were common to both sides.

New Arrival: • Union Soldiers in the American Civil War: Facts and Photos for Readers of All Ages   by Lance J. Herdegen (Savas Beatie, 2018). Lance Herdegen's Union Soldiers in the American Civil War is an introductory-level book organized and presented along similar lines to Mark Hughes's The New Civil War Handbook (2009) and The New Gettysburg Campaign Handbook (2011) from J.D. Petruzzi and

["An Arch Rebel Like Myself": Dan Showalter and the Civil War in California and Texas by Gene C. Armistead and Robert D. Arconti (McFarland, 2018). Softcover, maps, photos, appendices, notes, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:x,181/246. ISBN:978-1-4766-7461-2. $39.95] Like many of his fellow opportunity-seeking countrymen, Pennsylvania's Daniel Showalter undertook the arduous journey to

New Arrival: • Palmito Ranch: From Civil War Battlefield to National Historic Landmark   by Jody Edward Ginn and William Alexander McWhorter (TAMU Press, 2018). Coming in at less than 100 pages of narrative, Palmito Ranch is a quick read with a triple focus, discussing (1) both the 1864 and 1865 battles, (2) the archaeological studies performed at the site, and (3) the preservation work that led

For those who enjoyed Scott Hartwig's To Antietam Creek: The Maryland Campaign of September 1862 (JHUP, 2012) and are wondering how the second volume is shaping up, a helpful reader directed me to the author's Facebook page, where periodic progress reports appear. The last one from early June noted that the writing of the book's Sunken Road section (three chapters at over 100 pages) was just

New Arrival: • Abolitionism: A Very Short Introduction by Richard S. Newman (Oxford UP, 2018). Abolitionism is a new entry in Oxford's Very Short Introductions series, which tasks subject experts with brief overviews that "combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable." Most of you have probably seen these before in

New Arrival: • Coast-to-Coast Empire: Manifest Destiny and the New Mexico Borderlands   by William S. Kiser (Univ of Okla Press, 2018). A recently minted PhD, Kiser is already the author of four major studies dealing with the nineteenth-century American Southwest, and he's rapidly becoming a rising authority of the region and period. Readers might recall that I liked his Turmoil on the Rio

[Engines of Rebellion: Confederate Ironclads and Steam Engineering in the American Civil War by Saxon T. Bisbee (University of Alabama Press, 2018). Hardcover, photos, line drawings, appendices, notes, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:186/280. ISBN:978-0-8173-1986-1. $59.95] With an industrial base and pool of skilled marine carpenters and engineers that paled in comparison to the vast

New Arrival: • The Webster-Hayne Debate: Defining Nationhood in the Early American Republic   by Christopher Childers (Johns Hopkins UP, 2018). Part of JHUP's Witness to History series, The Webster-Hayne Debate examines one the great Senate debates over the preferred purpose and role of the federal government in the union of states. "Was it a confederation of sovereign states or a nation headed

New Arrival: • The Last Siege: The Mobile Campaign, Alabama 1865 by Paul Brueske   (Casemate, 2018). The Last Siege is a study of the Union Army's month-long 1865 land campaign that captured Spanish Fort and Fort Blakely, actions which successfully forced the evacuation of Mobile itself. The closest comparable work, Sean O'Brien's Mobile, 1865: Last Stand of the Confederacy, was published back

New Arrival: • “The Devil’s to Pay” - John Buford at Gettysburg: A History and Walking Tour   by Eric J. Wittenberg (Savas Beatie, 2018). “The Devil’s to Pay” is a book-length treatment of the important role played by General John Buford and his cavalry division during the Battle of Gettysburg. Though coverage extends from June 29 through July 2, there is special emphasis on Buford's celebrated

[Contested Loyalty: Debates over Patriotism in the Civil War North edited by Robert M. Sandow (Fordham University Press, 2018). Hardcover, notes, contributor list, index. 326 pp. ISBN:978-0-8232-7975-3. $65] Past proposals by historians that internal divisions were the primary cause of Confederate wartime defeat spawned an extensive literature related to Civil War loyalty and dissent. Though the

New Arrival: • A Family and Nation under Fire: The Civil War Letters and Journals of William and Joseph Medill edited by Georgiann Baldino (Kent St Univ Press, 2018). Edited by Georgiann Baldino, A Family and Nation under Fire is a "collection of previously unpublished diaries and correspondence between William Medill and older brother Joseph." Readers will probably be much more familiar with

I'm happy to find that naval historian Barbara Brooks Tomblin has another Civil War book on the horizon. Her Bluejackets and Contrabands: African Americans and the Union Navy (2009) offers, among other fine features, one of the most in-depth treatments of the mutually beneficial relationship forged between Union blockading vessels and escaped slaves that flocked to their incursions along the

[The American Military: A Concise History by Joseph T. Glatthaar (Oxford University Press, 2018). Hardcover, photos, notes, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:137/152. ISBN:978-0-19-069281-0. $18.95] Even the most general history of the American military from Jamestown through today might easily fill several large volumes, but, remarkably, Joseph Glatthaar's The American Military: A Concise

New Arrival: • Custer: The Making of a Young General by Edward G. Longacre (Skyhorse Pub, 2018). Edward Longacre is the author of a great multitude of Civil War biographies, unit studies, and cavalry histories, and his work has on several occasions touched upon the life and career of George Armstrong Custer. His Custer And His Wolverines: The Michigan Cavalry Brigade, 1861-1865 was published