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: 12/27/17
BERRY & ELDER (eds.): Practical Strangers (2017)
Practical Strangers: The Courtship Correspondence of Nathaniel Dawson and Elodie Todd, Sister of Mary Todd Lincoln edited by Stephen Berry and Angela Esco Elder. University of Georgia Press, 2017. Paper, ISBN: 978-0820351025....
Published: 12/20/17
ECELBARGER: Slaughter at the Chapel (2016)
Slaughter at the Chapel: The Battle of Ezra Church, 1864 by Gary Ecelbarger. University of Oklahoma Press, 2016. Cloth, ISBN: 978-0-8061-5499-2. $26.95. The Atlanta Campaign’s significance to the Union’s triumph in...
Published: 12/13/17
FREY: Failure to Pursue (2016)
Failure to Pursue: How the Escape of Defeated Forces Prolonged the Civil War by David Frey. McFarland and Company, 2016. Paper, ISBN: 978-1476666693. $39.95. Since the end of the American Civil War, a...
Published: 12/6/17
TUCKER: Pickett’s Charge (2016)
Pickett’s Charge: A New Look at Gettysburg’s Final Attack by Phillip Thomas Tucker. Skyhorse Publishing, 2016. Cloth, ISBN: 978-1-63450-796-7. $27.99. Phillip Thomas Tucker’s examination of Pickett’s Charge begins with a bold...
Published: 11/29/17
LEPA: The Union Sixth Corps in the Shenandoah Valley (2016)
The Union Sixth Corps in the Shenandoah Valley, June-October 1864 by Jack H. Lepa. McFarland and Company, 2016. Paper, ISBN: 978-1476666297. $35.00. One year after the Civil War’s guns fell silent,...
Published: 11/22/17
CODDINGTON: Faces of the Civil War Navies (2016)
Faces of the Civil War Navies: An Album of Union and Confederate Sailors by Ronald S. Coddington. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2016. Cloth, ISBN: 978-1421421360. $32.95. There is a certain level of satisfaction...
Published: 11/15/17
DIRCK: Lincoln in Indiana (2017)
Lincoln in Indiana by Brian R. Dirck. Southern Illinois University Press, 2017. Cloth, ISBN: 978-0809335657. $24.95. Historians and the general public alike have been fascinated with the life of Abraham Lincoln for...
Published: 11/8/17
HURLEY: California and the Civil War (2017)
California and the Civil War by Richard Hurley. History Press, 2017. Paper, ISBN: 978-1625858245. $21.99. Richard Hurley, an active popular and public historian, has provided an engaging and accessible primer to the complexities...
Published: 10/25/17
QUIGLEY: Pure Heart (2016)
Pure Heart: The Faith of a Father and Son in the War for a More Perfect Union by William F. Quigley, Jr. Kent State University Press, 2016. Cloth, IBSN: 978-1606352861. $39.95. In...
Published: 10/18/17
DAVIS: All the Fighting They Want (2017)
All the Fighting They Want: The Atlanta Campaign from Peachtree Creek to the City’s Surrender, July 18-September 2, 1864 by Stephen Davis. Savas Beatie, 2017. Paper, ISBN: 978-1611213195. $14.95. In a 2007 Civil...
Published: 10/11/17
GREEN: McClellan and the Union High Command (2017)
McClellan and the Union High Command, 1861-1863: Leadership Gaps That Cost a Timely Victory by Jeffrey W. Green. McFarland, 2017. Paper, ISBN: 978-1476665733. $35.00. Union strategy and command structure has become the...
Published: 10/4/17
HETTLE: The Confederate Homefront (2017)
The Confederate Homefront: A History in Documents by Wallace Hettle. Louisiana State University Press, 2017. Paper, ISBN: 978-0807165720. $29.95. With the fate of Confederate monuments across the South being hotly contested,...
Published: 9/27/17
CRAIG & ULLRICH: Unconditional Unionist (2016)
Unconditional Unionist: The Hazardous Life of Lucian Anderson, Kentucky Congressman by Berry Craig and Deiter C. Ullrich. McFarland & Company, Inc., 2016. Paper, ISBN: 978-1476663692. $35.00. Kentucky is the sphinx on...
Published: 9/20/17
FOUGHT: Women in the World of Frederick Douglass (2017)
Women in the World of Frederick Douglass by Leigh Fought. Oxford University Press, 2017. Cloth, ISBN: 9780199782376. $29.95. In 1838, Anna Murray helped her future-husband escape slavery. Although circumscribed by gender and racism...
Published: 9/13/17
WALDSTREICHER & MASON: John Quincy Adams and the Politics of Slavery (2016)
John Quincy Adams and the Politics of Slavery: Selections from the Diary by David Waldstreicher and Matthew Mason. Oxford University Press, 2016. Cloth, ISBN: 978-0199947959. $29.95. The past twenty years have...
Published: 9/6/17
PITTMAN: Rebels in the Rockies (2014)
Rebels in the Rockies: Confederate Irregulars in the Western Territories by Walter Earl Pittman. McFarland & Company, Inc., 2014. Paper, ISBN: 978-0786478200. $39.95. In 2000, in an article in Civil War History, Daniel...
Published: 8/30/17
EGERTON: Thunder at the Gates (2016)
Thunder at the Gates: The Black Civil War Regiments that Redeemed America by Douglas R. Egerton. Basic Books, Cloth, ISBN: 978-0465096640. $32.00. Douglas R. Egerton, professor of History at Le Moyne College, has spent...
Published: 8/30/17
MEZUREK: For Their Own Cause (2016)
For Their Own Cause: The 27th United States Colored Troops by Kelly D. Mezurek. The Kent State University Press, 2016. Cloth, IBSN: 978-1606352892. $37.95. Kelly D. Mezurek’s study of the 27th...