Blog
Published: 4/6/18
Beyond the White Man’s Iliad
CATNAP72 / ISTOCK A statue of Robert E. Lee sits atop the Virginia Monument on the Gettysburg Battlefield. The Confederate monument controversy that has exploded in recent months raises fundamental...
Published: 4/4/18
FRAKER: Looking for Lincoln in Illinois (2017)
Looking for Lincoln in Illinois: A Guide to Lincoln’s Eighth Judicial Circuit by Guy C. Fraker. Southern Illinois University Press, 2017. Paper, IBSN: 978-0809336166. $21.95. This is a delightful journey along the highways and...
Published: 3/28/18
CHERNOW: Grant (2017)
Grant by Ron Chernow. Penguin Press, 2017. Cloth, IBSN: 978-1594204876. $40.00. The standard interpretation of Ulysses S. Grant’s life usually recounts an undistinguished West Point and antebellum army career ended by alcohol abuse,...
Published: 3/21/18
KEATING: The Greatest Trials I Ever Had (2017)
The Greatest Trials I Ever Had: The Civil War Letters of Margaret and Thomas Cahill edited by Ryan W. Keating. University of Georgia Press, 2017. Paper, ISBN: 978-0820351551. $26.95. Good or even...
Published: 3/17/18
St. Patrick’s Day in the Army
On March 17, 1863, Josiah Marshall Favill, a young lieutenant in the 57th New York Infantry, was one of many soldiers in the Army of the Potomac to observe the...
Published: 3/16/18
Extra Voices: Tobacco
Library of Congress In the Voices section of the Spring 2018 issue of The Civil War Monitor we highlighted first-person quotes from Union and Confederate troops about the use of...
Published: 3/14/18
AYERS: The Thin Light of Freedom (2017)
The Thin Light of Freedom: The Civil War and Emancipation in the Heart of America by Edward Ayers. W.W. Norton, 2017. Cloth, ISBN: 978-0393292633. $35.00. At first glance, The Thin Light of Freedom appears...
Published: 3/9/18
The Eisenhower Farm during the Battle of Gettysburg
Wikipedia February 1959 White House portrait of President Dwight D. Eisenhower In the fall of 1950, General Dwight D. Eisenhower and his wife, Mamie, signed a contract to purchase a...
Published: 3/7/18
QUINT: Determined to Stand and Fight (2017)
Determined to Stand and Fight: The Battle of Monocacy, July 9, 1864 by Ryan T. Quint. Savas Beatie, 2017. Paper, ISBN 978-1-61121-346-1. $14.95. Nestled in the pastures southeast of Frederick, Maryland,...
Published: 2/28/18
SODERGREN: The Army of the Potomac in the Overland and Petersburg Campaigns (2017)
The Army of the Potomac in the Overland and Petersburg Campaigns by Steven E. Sodergren. Louisiana State Press, 2017. Cloth, ISBN: 978-0807165560. $47.95. In 1998, J. Tracy Power published Lee’s Miserables, a groundbreaking analysis...
Published: 2/23/18
The West’s Missing War
URSULA COYOTE/NETFLIX Jack O’Connell and Michelle Dockery in a scene from the Netflix miniseries Godless. As in previous depictions of the postwar West, the Civil War factors little into the...
Published: 2/21/18
SCALES: The Battles and Campaigns of Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest (2017)
The Battles and Campaigns of Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest 1861-1865 by John R. Scales. Savas Beatie, 2017. Cloth, IBSN: 978-1611212846. $32.95. In 1868, with the nation in the midst of a contentious political realignment...
Published: 2/14/18
PERRY: Bluff, Bluster, Lies and Spies (2016)
Bluff, Bluster, Lies and Spies: The Lincoln Foreign Policy, 1861–1865 by David Perry. Casemate, 2016. Cloth, ISBN: 9781612003627. $32.95. In this book, the author takes on one of the more fascinating—and...
Published: 2/7/18
McKNIGHT & MYERS (eds.): The Guerrilla Hunters (2017)
The Guerrilla Hunters: Irregular Conflicts During the Civil War edited by Brian D. McKnight & Barton A. Myers. Louisiana State University Press, 2017. Cloth, ISBN: 978-0807164976. $49.95. Brian D. McKnight and Barton...
Published: 2/2/18
A Story from the Trenches
Letters from a Surgeon of the Civil War John Gardner Perry During the early days of Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant’s attempt to capture Petersburg, Virginia, in the summer of...
Published: 1/31/18
BICKNELL: Lincoln’s Pathfinder (2017)
Lincoln’s Pathfinder: John C. Frémont and the Violent Election of 1856 by John Bicknell. Chicago Review Press, Inc., 2017. Cloth, ISBN: 978-1613737972. $26.99. John Bicknell is an accomplished journalist and author who should be...
Published: 1/24/18
POWELL: Barren Victory (2017)
The Chickamaugua Campaign: Barren Victory: The Retreat into Chattanooga, the Confederate Pursuit, and the Aftermath of the Battle, September 21 to October 20, 1863 by David A. Powell. Savas Beatie, 2017. Paper,...
Published: 1/19/18
Close Calls at Beaver Dam Creek
Army Letters, 1861–1865 Oliver Willcox Norton as he appeared in 1863 Little over a week after he participated in the Battle of Beaver Dam Creek—the first of the Seven Days...