last reads

[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.

[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:

[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,

[The Battle of Ball's Bluff: All the Drowned Soldiers by Bill Howard (Arcadia Publishing and The History Press, 2018). Softcover, 10 maps, photos, illustrations, appendices, notes, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:140/189. ISBN:978-1-4671-4073-7. $23.99] The October 21, 1861 Battle of Ball's Bluff, a Confederate victory in Virginia that decisively crowned that year's string of early-war

[Fighting for Atlanta: Tactics, Terrain, and Trenches in the Civil War by Earl J. Hess (University of North Carolina Press, 2018). Hardcover, 19 maps, 3 tables, photos, appendices, notes, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:xvi,294/417. ISBN:978-1-4696-4342-7. $45] The publication of the third and final piece of Earl Hess's acclaimed eastern theater field fortifications trilogy1 back in 2009

[At the Forefront of Lee's Invasion: Retribution, Plunder, and Clashing Cultures on Richard S. Ewell's Road to Gettysburg by Robert J. Wynstra (Kent State University Press, 2018). Cloth, maps, photos, illust., notes, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:vii,266/347. ISBN:978-1-60635-354-7. $49.95] Robert Wynstra's At the Forefront of Lee's Invasion: Retribution, Plunder, and Clashing Cultures

[Mountain Feds: Arkansas Unionists and the Peace Society by James J. Johnston (Butler Center for Arkansas Studies, 2018). Softcover, maps, photos, appendices, notes, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:200/305. ISBN:978-1-945624-12-4. $24.95] Contemporary source limitations will always inhibit modern efforts to record the full history of secret societies associated with the American Civil War,

[Decisions at Chattanooga: The Nineteen Critical Decisions That Defined the Battle by Larry Peterson (University of Tennessee Press, 2018). Softcover, 24 maps, 13 photos, appendices, notes, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:xv,85/191. $29.95] In 2018 alone, University of Tennessee Press has released the first four volumes of its unique Command Decisions in America’s Civil War series, which

[A Family and Nation under Fire: The Civil War Letters and Journals of William and Joseph Medill edited by Georgiann Baldino (Kent State University Press, 2018). Hardcover, maps, photos, notes, select source list, index. Pages main/total:xiii,209/245. ISBN:978-1-60635-336-3. $34.95] Edited by Georgiann Baldino, A Family and Nation under Fire is at its heart a collection of previously

[Five or Ten Minutes of Blind Confusion: The Battle of Aiken, South Carolina, February 11, 1865 by Eric J. Wittenberg (Fox Run Publishing, 2018). Cloth hardcover, 5 maps, photos, footnotes, appendices, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:vi,138/183. ISBN:978-1-945602-06-1. $26.95] While book-length studies of Civil War battles of all sizes abound in the literature, it's only been over the past

[Coast-to-Coast Empire: Manifest Destiny and the New Mexico Borderlands by William S. Kiser (University of Oklahoma Press, 2018). Hardcover, maps, photos, illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:xi,184/284. ISBN:978-0-8061-6026-9. $32.95] Though many nineteenth-century Americans viewed the Desert Southwest as a danger-filled wasteland unworthy of national possession and

[Palmito Ranch: From Civil War Battlefield to National Historic Landmark by Jody Edward Ginn and William Alexander McWhorter (Texas A&M University Press, 2018). Flexbound softcover, 6 maps, photos, illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:xvi,91/132. ISBN:978-1-62349-636-4. $26] In the realm of Texas Civil War battles, the two late-war engagements fought at Palmito Ranch

[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

["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

[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

[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

[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

[The Decision Was Always My Own: Ulysses S. Grant and the Vicksburg Campaign by Timothy B. Smith (Southern Illinois University Press, 2018). Cloth, 7 maps, photos, notes, biblio essay, index. Pages main/total:225/266. ISBN:978-0-8093-3666-1. $34.50] Though book-length coverage of many battles associated with the Union effort to capture Vicksburg between December 1862 and July 1863 remains spotty

[An Aide to Custer: The Civil War Letters of Lt. Edward G. Granger edited by Sandy Barnard & compiled by Thomas E. Singelyn (University of Oklahoma Press, 2018). Hardcover, 10 maps, photos, notes, bibliography, index. 316 pp. ISBN:978-0-8061-6018-4. $39.95] By the Civil War's second year, nineteen-year-old frustrated college dropout and aspiring lawyer Edward Granger of Grand Rapids, Michigan

[Practical Liberators: Union Officers in the Western Theater during the Civil War by Kristopher A. Teters (University of North Carolina Press, 2018). Hardcover, notes, bibliography, index. 240 pp. ISBN:978-1-4696-3886-7. $32.95] The popular understanding of the general course of the American Civil War suggests that northern volunteers enlisted to save the Union, but when emancipation became an