last reads

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

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

Accustomed to viewing surrender in wartime as involving a pretty dire set of circumstances (at the very least putting the prisoner-of-war out of action for the duration of the conflict), modern readers new to Civil War studies are probably surprised at how readily and often Civil War soldiers gave up in such large numbers and with such frequently transient consequences (ex. instant parole) to

Though Grant-Sherman adherents would surely beg to differ, I think you could make a strong argument that the close collaboration between Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson (as short-lived as it proved to be) overcame a rocky beginning during the Seven Days to become the war's premier command partnership. The news that Christian Keller's The Great Partnership: Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson,

Though the Confederate Army of Tennessee had moments of success in the early stages of several battles and won a decisive (albeit pyrrhic) victory at Chickamauga, it is generally considered a dysfunctional mess than never lived up to its potential. Opinions regarding just what went wrong with the army have been offered in numerous books and articles over the years. Comparing the Army of the

I always look forward to the next volume in SIU Press's Civil War Campaigns in the West series (formerly the Civil War Campaigns in the Heartland series). Five books have been published so far, the most recent covering the Tennessee Campaign of 1864, and I've liked them all. We now have some solid intel regarding when we'll see the next one. The release of The Vicksburg Assaults, May 19–22, 1863

Over the past fifteen years, scholarly and popular appreciation of the Civil War career of Lew Wallace has undergone quite a transformation. General acceptance of commentary condemning, or even mocking, Wallace as the incompetent political general who was unconscionably "late" at Shiloh has been replaced by far more nuanced, and more positive, assessments of many aspects of the high-ranking

Practically every aspect of Abraham Lincoln's life has some legend or two attached to it, and one of the early ones associated with his role as Commander-in-Chief involved his famous, and arguably foolhardy, personal reconnaissance of Southside Virginia during the 1862 Peninsula Campaign. Upset with the pace of the campaign, an impatient Lincoln ordered that troops be landed on the south shore 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

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

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

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 commercial viability of the general catalog of Savas Beatie titles allows them to occasionally produce the limited print run, specialized reference books that they could never survive doing as their main calling. An example is Ray Sibley's Confederate Artillery Organizations (2014) and more recently Richard Sauers's The National Tribune Civil War Index (3 Vols.). The latest multi-volume set

University of Tennessee Press has three Trans-Mississippi titles currently under development. The third Confederate generals essay anthology and 1st Oregon Cavalry memoirs and correspondence have already been mentioned here before, but the new Fall/Winter catalog also contains an announcement for High Private: The Trans-Mississippi Correspondence of Humorist R. R. Gilbert, 1862-1865 (October 2018

University of Tennessee Press's Confederate Generals in the Western Theater series concluded this year with the release of Volume 4, but the publisher's Fall/Winter '18 catalog has confirmed that there will indeed be a third and final installment of the companion series highlighting the lives and careers of Civil War generals that served on the other side of the river. Confederate Generals in the

I recently received LSU's Fall-Winter catalog and reviewer checklist. I wish every publisher could do this online. It just makes things so much simpler for all involved. Anyway, one of the most intriguing titles that I put on my list is Upon the Fields of Battle: Essays on the Military History of America's Civil War from contributing editors Andrew S. Bledsoe and Andrew F. Lang (November 2018).

I wish there were more new releases to talk about but May has been a complete bust so far, though I did get a couple of June titles early. So we'll get to some more book news instead. About a year ago I mentioned the U.S. Army's Combat Studies Institute's print publication of Charles Collins's promising-looking atlas of the 1864 Confederate expedition into Missouri, which was previously only

This is another interesting (to me anyway) title from the Fall-Winter catalogs that are just coming out. Civil War archaeology book releases have never been a yearly thing, but we're due for another one. Borderland studies is a popular field at the moment and Civil War era events and personalities from both sides of the Rio Grande have also received renewed attention. Stepping into these

The accepted name of this battle seems to be on a continuous loop, from Palmito Ranch to Palmetto Ranch and back again. In the current literature, the two standard works on the subject are Phillip Thomas Tucker's The Final Fury: Palmito Ranch - The Last Battle of the Civil War (2001) and The Last Battle of the Civil War: Palmetto Ranch (2002) by Jeffrey Hunt, with most preferring the latter study

That's the way it works. No survey history of the war west of the Mississippi is penned since the end of the conflict itself and then suddenly we get two published within eighteen months of each other. My thoughts on Theater of a Separate War are unchanged (and it looks like Amazon is practically giving away copies at the moment for some reason), but others continue to see it in a much more