last reads

New Arrival: • The Calculus of Violence: How Americans Fought the Civil War by Aaron Sheehan-Dean (Harvard UP, 2018). The Calculus of Violence: How Americans Fought the Civil War represents yet another call to scrap the traditional interpretation of the Civil War's violence and destruction as a linear progression from conciliation/limited war to hard/total war. Instead, author Aaron Sheehan-Dean

New Arrival: • High Private: The Trans-Mississippi Correspondence of Humorist R. R. Gilbert, 1862–1865 edited by Mary M. Cronin (UT Press, 2018). Mary Cronin's High Private: The Trans-Mississippi Correspondence of Humorist R. R. Gilbert, 1862–1865 explores the life, military service, and journalistic career of Vermont-raised but passionately Confederate Rensselaer Reed Gilbert (the book's title

New Arrival: • The War for the Common Soldier: How Men Thought, Fought, and Survived in Civil War Armies by Peter S. Carmichael (UNC Press, 2018). While there's no particular shortage of books describing and interpreting the experiences of Civil War soldiers in camp, on the march, and on the battlefield, new ideas and perspectives are always welcome. Central to Peter Carmichael's new book The

New Arrival: • Deep in the Piney Woods: Southeastern Alabama from Statehood to the Civil War, 1800–1865 by Tommy C. Brown (Univ of Ala Press, 2018). Scholarly trends in Civil War home front studies are always in flux and that rarely results in the various sub-regions within states being accorded equal coverage. For Alabama, the recent explosion of Southern Unionist scholarship has diverted much

[Fort Snelling and the Civil War by Stephen E. Osman (Ramsey County Historical Society, 2017). Paperback, 7 maps, 100+ photos, illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:xii,295/335. ISBN:978-0-934294-76-8. $27] Established in the early 1800s on treaty land acquired from the Dakota, Fort St. Anthony (renamed Fort Snelling in honor of Col. Josiah Snelling of the 5th U.S.

It doesn't take new Civil War readers long before they are confronted with the stark contrast between the stability and effectiveness of the Confederate high command structure in the East and the self-defeating constant flux and dysfunction embodied in the top leadership in the western theater. In the context of western Confederate generals who occupied high command positions for a long enough

New Arrival: • Brothers in Valor: Battlefield Stories of the 89 African Americans Awarded the Medal of Honor by Robert F. Jefferson, Jr. (Lyons Pr, 2018). "Since the American Civil War, scores of African Americans have served with great distinction. Through thousands of historical accounts, photographs, and documentary evidence," Robert Jefferson's Brothers in Valor "introduces the 89 black

New Arrival: • The Lost Indictment of Robert E. Lee: The Forgotten Case Against an American Icon   by John Reeves (Rowman & Littlefield, 2018). The reputations of major historical figures often follow an undulating course according to the changing cultural zeitgeist and many other factors that tell us just as much about the judges as they do those put in the dock. This is certainly the case with

New Arrival: • Don Troiani's Civil War Soldiers by Don Troiani, Earl J. Coates, and Michael J. McAfee   (Stackpole, 2017). During the 1990s, Civil War artwork peaked in popularity alongside book publishing. Art calendars and advertising could be found all over the place and the original oils went for small fortunes. Even before factoring in matte and framing costs, the numbered prints were

[War Matters: Material Culture in the Civil War Era edited by Joan E. Cashin (University of North Carolina Press, 2018). Softcover, photos, illustrations, notes index. Pages main/total:244/280. ISBN:978-1-4696-4320-5. $29.95] Within Civil War scholarship, material culture studies continue to be an undervalued academic sub-discipline, a state of affairs that the new essay anthology War Matters:

Back in February when I reviewed James White's New Bern and the Civil War (2018) and noted that it offered the first serious book-length treatment of the 1863-64 Confederate offensives in eastern North Carolina, I had no inkling that Hampton Newsome was finishing up a similar project of his own. It's another example of what I call the 'nothing-then-two-books' pattern that comes up in the Civil

New Arrival: • The Million-Dollar Man Who Helped Kill a President: George Washington Gayle and the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln by Christopher Lyle McIlwain, Sr. (Savas Beatie, 2018). I don't have a great sense of when the modern peak period was (perhaps the years surrounding the publication of Blood on the Moon), but it does seem like Lincoln assassination books appear with lesser frequency

New Arrival: • The Real Horse Soldiers: Benjamin Grierson’s Epic 1863 Civil War Raid Through Mississippi by Timothy B. Smith (Savas Beatie, 2018). General Grant ordered a number of diversionary movements to mask the main crossing of his army below Vicksburg. As April turned to May, when the Army of the Tennessee finally did land on solid ground in Mississippi near Bruinsburg, the Confederate

[Upon the Fields of Battle: Essays on the Military History of America's Civil War edited by Andrew S. Bledsoe & Andrew F. Lang (Louisiana State University Press, 2018). Cloth, notes, index. 320 pp. ISBN:978-0-8071-6977-3. $48] What has been termed "traditional" military history (i.e. the study of war-related national politics and diplomacy, generals and soldiers, strategy, operations, battles,

1. Look To Earth: Historical Archaeology and the American Civil War by Clarence R. Geier, Jr. & Susan E. Winter (1994). All of the contributors to my most recent read, Joan Cashin's War Matters (review to follow later this month), enjoin their still largely skeptical professional colleagues to incorporate material culture studies into their own work. Since modern historical archaeology offers us

New Arrival: • The Lost Civil War Diary of John Rigdon King: The Story of an American Civil War Hero by Donald B. Jenkins (Arcadia Pub & The Hist Press, 2018). At a 2004 farm auction in Virginia, the Civil War diary (October 22, 1861-May 22, 1862) of Marylander John Rigdon King was obtained by Donald Jenkins and his brother in their purchase of a lot of old books. An army sutler and photographer

New Arrival: • Fort Snelling and the Civil War by Stephen E. Osman (Ramsey County Historical Society, 2017). I have a high level of appreciation for books published by museums and historical societies. Though it's not always the case, they are quite frequently the product of lifetimes of study by local and site historians or highly dedicated volunteer enthusiasts. Even though they surely