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: 2/24/21
Robert E. Lee and Me (2021)
All but one of the barracks at the United States Military Academy are named for high-ranking generals who distinguished themselves on the battlefield. That building is named for a U.S....
Published: 2/17/21
Ambitious Honor (2020)
Author James Mueller’s new book opens with an anecdote from 1880, capturing a conversation between portrait artist James E. Kelly and General Winfield Scott Hancock. As Kelly painted a stiff...
Published: 2/10/21
Bonds of Salvation (2020)
Bonds of Salvation is the result of Ben Wright’s deeply personal “attempts to reconcile the inspiring piety and moral blind spots of the evangelical Christian community in which I was...
Published: 2/3/21
The Last Lincoln Republican (2020)
No period in U.S. history has invited more counterfactual thinking than Reconstruction. As Brook Thomas observed, the field’s reigning synthesis, which frames Reconstruction as an “unfinished revolution,” conjures “a world...
Published: 1/27/21
Patriots Twice (2020)
In Patriots Twice: Former Confederates and the Building of America after the Civil War, author Stephen M. Hood seeks to highlight the postwar lives and accomplishments of 220 Confederate veterans....
Published: 1/20/21
Tullahoma (2020)
The diligent, robust scholarship found on the pages of Tullahoma: The Forgotten Campaign that Challenged the Course of the Civil War, June 23 – July 4, 1863 has not only expanded the...
Published: 1/13/21
The Thin Gray Line (2019)
Civil War fiction often focuses on battlefield scenarios or romantic tales. The Thin Gray Line offers a new look at the darker side of the war, tracing a Confederate soldier’s adventures...
Published: 1/6/21
Women Making War (2020)
In Women Making War: Female Confederate Prisoners and Union Military Justice, Thomas F. Curran examines partisan Confederate women in St. Louis during the Civil War and how the federal government—specifically...
Published: 12/30/20
Absalom Hazlett (2020)
Of all the violent incidents foreshadowing the Civil War, few compare to John Brown’s calamitous and controversial raid on Harpers Ferry. In the 160-plus years since, Brown’s story has been...
Published: 12/23/20
Defending the Arteries of Rebellion (2020)
In April 1861, artillery batteries of the newly proclaimed Confederate States of America opened fire on a small United States fort in Charleston Harbor. Since the very founding of the...
Published: 12/16/20
William Tecumseh Sherman (2016)
Can anything new be written of William Tecumseh Sherman? Commonly regarded as the second-greatest soldier to fight for the Federal armies in the War of the Rebellion, and one of...
Published: 12/9/20
Jefferson Davis, Napoleonic France, and the Nature of Confederate Ideology (2020)
Jeffrey Zvengrowski, a professor at the University of Virginia and assistant editor of the Papers of George Washington, has produced a truly fresh interpretation of the Confederate States of America....
Published: 12/2/20
Storming Vicksburg (2020)
Vicksburg has fared well in recent Civil War historiography. Works by Bradley R. Clampitt (2016), Steven E. Woodworth and Charles D. Grear (2019), and Timothy B. Smith (2019 and 2020)...
Published: 11/25/20
The Maps of the Cavalry in the Gettysburg Campaign (2020)
Gary Gallagher, one of our nation’s most distinguished Civil War era historians, contends (and I happen to concur with him on this point) that “Civil War battlefields bring the past...
Published: 11/18/20
Soldiers National Cemetery at Gettysburg (2020)
In June 1863, the Army of Northern Virginia launched its summer campaign, which culminated in the Battle of Gettysburg. Most Americans today are aware of the importance of the battle...
Published: 11/11/20
Fighting for Citizenship (2020)
In the fall of 1862, as Confederate forces surged into Kentucky, white residents of Cincinnati dragooned the city’s black inhabitants into defending the city. This forced labor rankled many, who...
Published: 11/4/20
My Dear Nelly (2020)
Good collections of Civil War letters offer insight into the worlds of soldiers and civilians by revealing both connections to the larger conflict and the rhythms of ordinary life during...
Published: 10/28/20
Unforgiven (2021)
The assassination of Abraham Lincoln stands as one of the most calamitous events in United States history. An assassin’s bullet struck down the sixteenth president at the culmination of four...