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: 9/4/13
Remembering the Civil War (2013)
For ten years, the study of the historical memory of the Civil War has been dominated by David W. Blight’s Race and Reunion. New scholarship has filled in gaps and...
Published: 8/28/13
The Battles That Made Abraham Lincoln (2012)
The “battles” referenced in the title to this book are not Gettysburg, or any of the famous military showdowns of the Civil War. Larry Tagg instead examines the various ways...
Published: 8/21/13
Blood and Daring (2013)
Like a traveler without a passport, John Boyko’s Blood and Daring: How Canada Fought the American Civil War and Forged a Nation finds itself intellectually detained at the border. Solid enough...
Published: 8/14/13
Guerrilla Hunters in Civil War Missouri (2013)
Although historians once dismissed Missouri as the “sideshow” of the Civil War, it has since become notorious as the scene of a long, brutal, and divisive guerrilla war. In fact,...
Published: 8/7/13
Kennesaw Mountain (2013)
In a brutal series of engagements fought between May and September 1864, the Atlanta Campaign became one of the crucial moments in the Civil War. Often overshadowed by U.S. Grant’s...
Published: 7/31/13
A Punishment on the Nation (2012)
In A Punishment on the Nation, Brian Miller presents the nearly two hundred letters of Private Silas W. Haven, a member of the 27th Iowa Volunteer Infantry. Haven, born in...
Published: 7/24/13
Copperhead (2013)
What is the worst sin a movie can commit? Excessive, gratuitous violence? Flagrant disregard for universal truths? A meandering plot? Terrible acting? To my mind, the worst sin a movie...
Published: 7/17/13
Battle of Stones River (2012)
On the first day of the Battle of Stones River, Federal troops struggled to push back a fierce Confederate assault. The bugler for an Ohio regiment was fleeing from the...
Published: 7/17/13
The Fall of the House of Dixie (2013)
In The Fall of the House of Dixie, Bruce Levine sets out to reintroduce the Civil War to the American public not as a series of battles but as a...
Published: 7/10/13
A Surgeon’s Tale (2011)
The American Civil War was a veritable bloodbath for the men who waged it. More than 400,000 Billy Yanks were wounded throughout the conflict—245,000 of those casualties were gunshot wounds....
Published: 7/10/13
River of Dark Dreams (2013)
Walter Johnson opens River of Dark Dreams with a bang and a dream: the 1850 explosion of the steam boat Anglo-Norman at New Orleans and Thomas Jefferson’s “empire of liberty” dream....
Published: 7/3/13
A Field Guide to Gettysburg (2013)
This is the second collaboration between Carol Reardon, a professor of military history at Penn State University, and Tom Vossler, a retired Army colonel and licensed Gettysburg battlefield guide since...
Published: 7/3/13
The Gettysburg Campaign in Numbers and Losses (2013)
Civil War veterans were obsessed with numbers and losses. Regimental historians corresponded with their former comrades for decades, hoping to render an “accurate” depiction of their wartime travails. Grand Army...
Published: 6/26/13
The Election of 1860 Reconsidered (2013)
This series of essays on the election of 1860 had its origins in the third annual symposium of the Civil War Study Group, hosted by the University of Indianapolis, in...
Published: 6/12/13
What the Yankees Did to Us (2012)
General William Tecumseh Sherman was a very bad man. This is the main point of Stephen Davis’ exhaustive history of the Union capture of Atlanta in 1864. Davis makes his...
Published: 6/9/13
Grant at Vicksburg (2013)
Grant at Vicksburg is much more than a biography or campaign study. The depth of Michael Ballard’s research into Grant’s correspondence and routine make it a study in command, control,...
Published: 6/5/13
A Misplaced Massacre (2013)
November 29, 2014, will mark the 150th anniversary of the Sand Creek Massacre. On that day in 1864, elements of the 1st and 3rd Colorado volunteer regiments slaughtered more than...
Published: 5/29/13
They Have Left Us Here To Die (2011)
Glen Robins’ transcription and analysis of Sargent Lyle G. Adair’s prison diary provides insight into the Civil War prison camp experience. In They Have Left Us Here to Die, Robins...