last reads

[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

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

[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

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