Blog
Published: 9/18/13
The World’s Largest Prison (2012)
A military prison need not have operated for long to warrant remembrance. That is the primary premise from which John K. Derden begins to record the short history of Camp...
Published: 9/13/13
An Interview with Margaret Humphreys
Our conversation with Margaret Humphreys, the Josiah Charles Trent Professor in the History of Medicine at Duke University and author of Marrow of Tragedy: The Health Crisis of the American...
Published: 9/11/13
Disunion (2013)
In the fall of 2010 The New York Times marked the 150th anniversary of Lincoln’s election and the commencement of the Civil War by launching “Disunion,” a daily feature on its “Opinionator”...
Published: 9/6/13
An Interview with Cate Wyatt
Our conversation with Cate Wyatt, President of the Journey Through Hallowed Ground Partnership. In the interview, Wyatt discusses the extensive work of the partnership over a 180 mile stretch from...
Published: 9/4/13
Remembering the Civil War (2013)
For ten years, the study of the historical memory of the Civil War has been dominated by David W. Blight’s Race and Reunion. New scholarship has filled in gaps and...
Published: 8/28/13
The Battles That Made Abraham Lincoln (2012)
The “battles” referenced in the title to this book are not Gettysburg, or any of the famous military showdowns of the Civil War. Larry Tagg instead examines the various ways...
Published: 8/21/13
Blood and Daring (2013)
Like a traveler without a passport, John Boyko’s Blood and Daring: How Canada Fought the American Civil War and Forged a Nation finds itself intellectually detained at the border. Solid enough...
Published: 8/19/13
Of Eyes and Teeth: The Trial of George Maddox, the Raid on Lawrence, and the Bloodstained Verdict of the Guerrilla War
Just after seven o’clock on the night of April, 2 1867, George Maddox slipped out the backdoor of the Ottawa, Kansas, courthouse, hopped on his horse, and rode for Missouri....
Published: 8/14/13
Guerrilla Hunters in Civil War Missouri (2013)
Although historians once dismissed Missouri as the “sideshow” of the Civil War, it has since become notorious as the scene of a long, brutal, and divisive guerrilla war. In fact,...
Published: 8/12/13
Williamsburg Battlefield Trust, Embattled
In Virginia’s “Historic Triangle” of Jamestown, Williamsburg, and Yorktown, colonial and revolutionary history far outshine the area’s role in the Civil War. Further, when one considers the role of African...
Published: 8/7/13
Kennesaw Mountain (2013)
In a brutal series of engagements fought between May and September 1864, the Atlanta Campaign became one of the crucial moments in the Civil War. Often overshadowed by U.S. Grant’s...
Published: 7/31/13
A Punishment on the Nation (2012)
In A Punishment on the Nation, Brian Miller presents the nearly two hundred letters of Private Silas W. Haven, a member of the 27th Iowa Volunteer Infantry. Haven, born in...
Published: 7/24/13
Copperhead (2013)
What is the worst sin a movie can commit? Excessive, gratuitous violence? Flagrant disregard for universal truths? A meandering plot? Terrible acting? To my mind, the worst sin a movie...
Published: 7/17/13
Battle of Stones River (2012)
On the first day of the Battle of Stones River, Federal troops struggled to push back a fierce Confederate assault. The bugler for an Ohio regiment was fleeing from the...
Published: 7/17/13
The Fall of the House of Dixie (2013)
In The Fall of the House of Dixie, Bruce Levine sets out to reintroduce the Civil War to the American public not as a series of battles but as a...
Published: 7/15/13
The Pursuit
On July 7 Major General George Gordon Meade left Gettysburg and traveled to Frederick, Maryland. He found the streets crowded with people eager to get a glimpse of him. The...
Published: 7/10/13
A Surgeon’s Tale (2011)
The American Civil War was a veritable bloodbath for the men who waged it. More than 400,000 Billy Yanks were wounded throughout the conflict—245,000 of those casualties were gunshot wounds....
Published: 7/10/13
River of Dark Dreams (2013)
Walter Johnson opens River of Dark Dreams with a bang and a dream: the 1850 explosion of the steam boat Anglo-Norman at New Orleans and Thomas Jefferson’s “empire of liberty” dream....