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: 8/30/17
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...
Published: 8/23/17
EMBERTON & BAKER (eds.): Remembering Reconstruction (2017)
Remembering Reconstruction: Struggles Over the Meaning of America’s Most Turbulent Era edited by Carole Emberton and Bruce E. Baker. Louisiana State University Press, 2017. Cloth, IBSN: 978-0807166024. $43.50. For nearly two decades, David...
Published: 8/16/17
BETIT: War’s Cost (2016)
War’s Cost: The Hites’ Civil War by Eugene DeFriest Bétit. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2016. Paper, IBSN: 978-1530062713. $15.00. By observing individual historical actors, a historian may reveal additional knowledge about...
Published: 8/16/17
FRAZIER: Blood on the Bayou (2015)
Blood on the Bayou: Vicksburg, Port Hudson, and the Trans-Mississippi by Donald S. Frazier. State House Press, 2015. Cloth, ISBN: 978-1933337630. $39.99. Donald S. Frazier, a professor of History at McMurry University,...
Published: 8/9/17
EPPS: Slavery on the Periphery (2016)
Slavery on the Periphery: The Kansas-Missouri Border in the Antebellum and Civil War Years by Kristen Epps. University of Georgia Press, 2016. Cloth, ISBN: 978-0820350509. $59.95. When we think about the places...
Published: 8/2/17
CAMPI: Civil War Battlefields (2016)
Civil War Battlefields: Then and Now by James Campi, Jr. Pavilion Books, 2016. Cloth, ISBN: 978-1-9109048-0-0. $19.95. Celebrated Civil War photographer Alexander Gardner noted at the conflict’s end that his work...
Published: 7/26/17
FILIPOWSKI & HARRINGTON: The Boy Soldier (2016)
The Boy Soldier: Edwin Jemison and the Story Behind the Most Remarkable Portrait of the Civil War by Alexandra Filipowski and Hugh T. Harrington. Westholme Publishing, 2016. Cloth, ISBN: 978-1-59416-264-0. $26.00....
Published: 7/19/17
KASTENBERG: A Confederate in Congress (2016)
A Confederate in Congress: The Civil War Treason Trial of Benjamin Gwinn Harris by Joshua E. Kastenberg. McFarland & Company, 2016. Paper, IBSN: 978-1476664897. $35.00. In the weeks following the chaos...
Published: 7/12/17
ADAMS & HUDSON (eds.): Democracy and the American Civil War (2016)
Democracy and the American Civil War: Race and African Americans in the Nineteenth Century edited by Kevin Adams and Leonne M. Hudson. Kent State University Press, 2016. Paper, IBSN: 978-1606352694. $24.95....
Published: 7/5/17
JOHANSSON (ed.): Albert C. Ellithorpe, the First Indian Home Guards, and the Civil War on the Trans-Mississippi Frontier (2016)
Albert C. Ellithorpe, The First Indian Home Guards, and the Civil War on the Trans-Mississippi Frontier edited by M. Jane Johansson. Louisiana State University Press, 2016. Cloth, ISBN: 978-0807163580. $45.00. Recent...
Published: 6/28/17
MACKOWSKI: Grant’s Last Battle (2015)
Grant’s Last Battle: The Story Behind the Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant by Chris Mackowski. Savas Beatie, 2015. Paper, ISBN 978-1611211603. $14.95. In the decades after the Civil War ended,...
Published: 6/21/17
RASBACH: Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain and the Petersburg Campaign (2016)
Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain and the Petersburg Campaign: His Supposed Charge from Fort Hell, his Near-Mortal Wounding, and a Civil War Myth Reconsidered by Dennis A. Rasbach. Savas Beatie, 2016. Hardcover, ISBN:...
Published: 6/16/17
The B&A Q&A: Sydney Blumenthal
In May, Simon & Schuster released Wrestling With His Angel, the second book in veteran journalist and presidential advisor Sidney Blumenthal’s multivolume political biography of President Abraham Lincoln. (A Self-Made Man, the series’ critically...
Published: 6/14/17
LAUSE: Free Spirits (2016)
Free Spirits: Spiritualism, Republicanism, and Radicalism in the Civil War Era by Mark A. Lause. University of Illinois Press, 2016. Paper, ISBN: 978-0252081750. $30.00. Spiritualism has conflicting origins. On the one...
Published: 6/8/17
MACKOWSKI: Hell Itself (2016)
Hell Itself: The Battle of the Wilderness, May 5–7, 1864 by Chris Mackowski. Savas Beatie, 2016. Paper, ISBN: 978-1611213157. $14.95. Only months after receiving command of all Union forces, Lt. Gen....
Published: 6/7/17
CLEMENS (ed.): The Maryland Campaign of September 1862 (2017)
The Maryland Campaign of September 1862: Vol. III: The Battle of Shepherdstown and the End of the Campaign by Ezra A. Carman and edited by Thomas Clemens. Savas Beatie, 2017. Cloth,...
Published: 5/31/17
DOYLE (ed.): American Civil Wars (2017)
American Civil Wars: The United States, Latin America, Europe, and the Crisis of the 1860s edited by Don H. Doyle. The University of North Carolina Press, 2017. Paper, ISBN: 9781469631080. $27.95....