Blog
Published: 6/23/21
Abandoned Coastal Defenses of Alabama (2021)
Review of a brief history of Alabama's Fort Morgan and Fort Gaines.
Published: 6/16/21
Civil War Supply and Strategy (2020)
Review of another winning book from a prolific historian of the Civil War.
Published: 6/9/21
Embattled Capital (2021)
A review of a title that's more than your run-of-the-mill guidebook.
Published: 6/7/21
Extra Voices: Fear
Read firsthand Union and Confederate soldiers' quotes on the feelings of fear they experienced in battle.
Published: 6/2/21
Meade and Lee at Rappahannock Station (2021)
An "exhaustively researched" history of a neglected period in 1863.
Published: 5/26/21
The Howling Storm (2020)
Review of a welcome new environmental history of the Civil War.
Published: 5/24/21
The Death of Colonel Ellsworth
Read The New York Times' lengthy tribute to Elmer Ellsworth after the young Union colonel's death in 1861.
Published: 5/19/21
Imagining Wild Bill (2020)
A "well-written and accessible study of historical memory."
Published: 5/12/21
Christian Citizens (2020)
An important work about the intersection of religion, race, gender, and 19th-century southern politics.
Published: 5/5/21
Whisperwood (2020)
Review of a novel about the valor and courage of a soldier struggling to survive.
Published: 4/28/21
The Assault on Fort Blakeley (2021)
Review of a new history of one of Alabama's main coastal defenses.
Published: 4/21/21
The Last Slave Ships (2020)
A fascinating study of the demise of the illegal trans-Atlantic slave trade.
Published: 4/16/21
War’s Early Days
Read South Carolina diarist Mary Boykin Chesnut's gripping account of the fall of Fort Sumter and its aftermath.
Published: 4/15/21
“The First Gun is Fired”
The story—and lyrics—of George Root's Apri 1861 song about Fort Sumter, "The First Gun is Fired: May God Protect the Right."
Published: 4/14/21
What Though the Field Be Lost (2021)
A collection of poems that are "cerebral" and "dense with literary and historical allusions."
Published: 4/9/21
Word-Clouding Lee’s and Grant’s Farewell Addresses
View the words Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee used in the farewell addresses they delivered to their men as represented in a word cloud.
Published: 4/7/21
Incidents in the Life of Cecilia Lawton (2021)
An insightful look at the mindset of white southerners in the wake of the Civil War.
Published: 4/5/21
Extra Voices: Shirkers
Read firsthand Civil War soldier quotes on shirking in the Union and Confederate armies.