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: 10/7/20
My Remembrance of the War (2019)
Just before the Battle of Antietam in September 1862, a soldier requested that, if he should die, George C. Maguire procure his knapsack and destroy its contents—including a cache of...
Published: 9/30/20
Lincoln and the American Founding (2020)
Abraham Lincoln still resonates with people throughout the world who call upon him for words of wisdom during times of conflict. His poetic prose dedicated to the principle of democracy...
Published: 9/23/20
Tempest Over Texas (2020)
For the past quarter century, Donald S. Frazier, currently the Director of the Texas Center at Schreiner University, has been writing innovative studies about the U.S. Civil War. Frazier’s first...
Published: 9/16/20
Old Abe (2020)
Abraham Lincoln’s life and struggles have been told and re-told in a variety of formats and perspectives. This new release—Old Abe: A Novel by John Cribb—is remarkable for its straightforward depictions...
Published: 9/9/20
Colossal Ambitions (2020)
In recent years, Paul Quigley, Michael T. Bernath, Ann Tucker, Andre Fleche, and Don Doyle have greatly expanded our understanding of the Confederate nation, situating the slaveholding republic within a...
Published: 9/2/20
The Women’s Fight (2020)
“The spaces in which women live during times of war are no more inviolate than the spaces in which men fight, and the two are never completely cordoned off from...
Published: 8/26/20
Seceding from Secession (2020)
Thirty years after the Civil War, Theodore Lang, a veteran of the 6th West Virginia Cavalry, observed that “a great neglect exists at this time, and has existed for many...
Published: 8/19/20
Hellmira (2020)
With Hellmira, Derek Maxfield supplies an easy-to-read introductory volume on Civil War military prisons, placing emphasis on the “Andersonville of the North.” Arguing that one cannot understand the “Hellmira” myth...
Published: 8/12/20
Christopher H. Tebault, Surgeon to the Confederacy (2020)
Collectors of historical artifacts often like to share what they have learned about the previous owners of their treasures. That motive drove Alan I. West, who purchased a medicine chest...
Published: 8/5/20
Newest Born of Nations (2020)
Paul Quigley has written that white Southerners “often placed the American nation in international context” (Quigley, Shifting Grounds, 7). Ann L. Tucker, a former student of Quigley’s, describes how southerners...
Published: 7/29/20
Horace Greeley (2019)
Most students of nineteenth century America regard Horace Greeley as a political chameleon. The bespectacled New York Tribune editor who sensationalized the violence of Bleeding Kansas, impatiently urged Lincoln’s armies “on...
Published: 7/22/20
In The Waves (2020)
On a calm, cool February night in 1864, the USS Housatonic lay at anchor just outside of Charleston harbor. One of many Union ships blockading one of the Confederacy’s few remaining...
Published: 7/15/20
Arguing Until Doomsday (2020)
Listening to a debate between Stephen Douglas and Jefferson Davis in February 1859, Georgia senator Alfred Iverson told his colleagues, “If we permit these gentlemen to go on brandying arguments...
Published: 7/8/20
Vicksburg Besieged (2020)
Since 2018, the Vicksburg campaign bibliography has grown considerably. In addition to Donald L. Miller’s gripping narrative history, the inexhaustible Timothy B. Smith has produced important studies of Grierson’s Mississippi...
Published: 7/1/20
The Three-Cornered War (2020)
Since the origins of the Civil War were rooted in discussions over western territory, one would think scholarship on the ensuing conflict might keep the American West in view. Yet...
Published: 6/24/20
Grand Army Women (2020)
As the largest fraternal order for Union veterans, the Grand Army of the Republic has invited much attention from historians. Stuart F. McConnell, Mary R. Dearing, and Barbara A. Gannon—among...
Published: 6/17/20
Targeted Tracks (2019)
The Civil War is often considered a “modern” war for its use of such technologies as photography, telegraphic communication, aerial reconnaissance, steam-powered and ironclad vessels, repeating rifles, and strategic use...
Published: 6/10/20
How the South Won the Civil War (2020)
At the Neshoba County Fair in 1980, Ronald Reagan “brought the South and the West together to take over national politics” (185). Reagan, wearing a cowboy hat—a regular feature of...