Book Reviews
The digital home of book reviews and author interviews—and your source of the most up-to-date information on all things Civil War literature
Published: 8/11/21
Grand Army of Labor (2021)
How the Civil War both strengthened and constrained the American labor movement.
Published: 8/4/21
The Bonds of War (2021)
A combo microhistory and collective biography that works well.
Published: 7/28/21
No Place for Glory (2021)
A reinterpretation of one of the Gettysburg Campaign's pivotal episodes.
Published: 7/21/21
West of Slavery (2021)
A critical intervention in the literature on the Civil War in the West.
Published: 7/14/21
Civil War Richmond (2021)
A "a sharp, well-written, and concise social history" of Virginia’s capital city.
Published: 7/7/21
Faces of Union Soldiers at South Mountain & Harpers Ferry (2021)
Incisive biographies of 30 Union soldiers.
Published: 6/30/21
A Mortal Blow to the Confederacy (2021)
Review of a "highly recommended" account of the fall of New Orleans.
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: 6/2/21
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: 5/19/21
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: 4/14/21
What Though the Field Be Lost (2021)
A collection of poems that are "cerebral" and "dense with literary and historical allusions."