last reads

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,