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

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

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

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

New Arrival: • War Matters: Material Culture in the Civil War Era edited by Joan E. Cashin   (UNC Press, 2018). The use of objects to open historical discussion and inspire imagination has always been around in the museum setting, but the practice has increased in popularity of late among a variety of other learning outlets, included books and podcasts. This idea that things you can see and/or

New Arrival: • Aberration of Mind: Suicide and Suffering in the Civil War–Era South   by Diane Miller Sommerville (UNC Press, 2018). It's probably safe to say that a 450-page book about psychological suffering and suicide in the stricken South is not on the Christmas list of too many Civil War readers, but it is an important, understudied social and cultural topic that Diane Sommerville's

New Arrival: • Movements and Positions in the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain: The Memoir of Colonel James T. Holmes, 52d Ohio Volunteer Infantry by James T. Holmes, edited by Garth D. Bishop, with intro. and annotations by Mark A. Smith (McFarland, 2018). Written in 1915 and published for the first time in the pages of Movements and Positions in the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain: The Memoir of

New Arrival: • Lincoln's Mercenaries: Economic Motivation Among Union Soldiers During the Civil War   by William Marvel (LSU Press, 2018). Ever since Bell Wiley pioneered serious study of the common soldiers of the Civil War, enlistment motivation has been explored in innumerable books, parts of books, and articles. By now, all possible reasons for joining the Union and Confederate armies have

New Arrival: • The Battle of Ball's Bluff: All the Drowned Soldiers by Bill Howard   (Arcadia Pub & The Hist Press, 2018). Four book-length Ball's Bluff studies exist, the most thorough among them James Morgan's treatment, which was republished in a "revised and expanded" edition in 2011. Bill Howard's The Battle of Ball's Bluff: All the Drowned Soldiers is another new edition of an earlier work

New Arrival: • Appealing for Liberty: Freedom Suits in the South by Loren Schweninger (Oxford UP, 2018). "(D)rawing from more than 2,000 suits and from the testimony of more than 4,000 plaintiffs from the Revolutionary era to the Civil War," Loren Schweninger's Appealing for Liberty: Freedom Suits in the South offers readers the "first comprehensive study" of the use of courtrooms all across the

New Arrival: • Upon the Fields of Battle: Essays on the Military History of America's Civil War edited by Andrew S. Bledsoe & Andrew F. Lang (LSU Press, 2018). At least in the academic world, the intellectual utility of studying the most foundational elements of Civil War military history and science (i.e. soldiers, generals, battles, strategy, tactics, logistics, etc.) remains an oddly

New Arrival: • Major General George H. Sharpe and the Creation of American Military Intelligence in the Civil War by Peter G. Tsouras (Casemate, 2018). Though mostly mocked for his role in framing General McClellan's inflated estimates of enemy troop strength in the East, Alan Pinkerton is probably the most well-known Union military intelligence chief. However, the man who proved most effective

New Arrival: • In Memory of Self and Comrades: Thomas Wallace Colley's Recollections of Civil War Service in the 1st Virginia Cavalry edited by Michael K. Shaffer (UT Press, 2018). In Memory of Self and Comrades: Thomas Wallace Colley's Recollections of Civil War Service in the 1st Virginia Cavalry is the latest volume from UT Press's long-running series Voices of the Civil War. From the