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: 12/18/12
The Iron Brigade in Civil War and Memory (2012)
Few infantry units in the Federal or Confederate armies match the Iron Brigade in reputation or accomplishment. Distinguishing themselves at the Brawner Farm, on South Mountain, during the Battle of...
Published: 12/12/12
The Great Heart of the Republic (2011)
Adam Arenson’s engaging study of mid-nineteenth-century St. Louis is a story of national potential and national failure. Located at the intersection of North, South, and West, St. Louis requires us...
Published: 12/10/12
Holiday Civil War Trivia Contest: Winner
Trivia Question: A skirmish at this place on October 29, 1862, is widely regarded as the first time black troops in the Union Blue engaged in combat during the Civil War. Correct...
Published: 12/5/12
Faces of the Civil War (2012)
Ron Coddington’s Faces of the Civil War: An Album of Union Soldiers and Their Stories grew out of his interests as a photographer and a collector of Civil War-era cartes de visite....
Published: 11/28/12
Lincoln (2012) [Take 2]
Movies can negatively shape popular perceptions of history. Birth of a Nation (1915) helped lead to the revival of the Klan. Gone with the Wind (1939) still shapes many peoples’ comprehensions of slavery. The...
Published: 11/21/12
Lincoln and the Election of 1860 (2011)
This volume, part of a series entitled “The Concise Lincoln Library,” focuses on Abraham Lincoln’s role in the momentous events of 1860—the Republican presidential nomination in May, and his subsequent...
Published: 11/12/12
Lincoln (2012) [Take 1]
It is long past time for historians to abandon the expectation that historical films will be historically accurate down to their most minute detail. Achieving this kind of authenticity is...
Published: 11/7/12
Lee and His Generals (2012)
A new collection of essays explores the distinguished historian T. Harry Williams and topics shaped by his work. Editors Lawrence Lee Hewitt and Thomas E. Schott have crafted Lee and...
Published: 10/31/12
War’s Desolating Scourge (2012)
War’s Desolating Scourge is a fascinating study of the Federal occupation of North Alabama, and the continued defiance of loyal Confederates in the face of shifting political and military aims. Much...
Published: 10/24/12
The Peninsula Campaign (2012)
The subject of African Americans fighting for the South tends to generate two polar responses: either it’s a neo-Confederate fantasy with no more legitimacy than Holocaust denial, or it’s a...
Published: 10/10/12
The Tribunal (2012)
The Tribunal: Responses to John Brown and the Harpers Ferry Raid is a welcome addition to a small collection of Brown readers, including another by editors John Stauffer and Zoe Trodd, Meteor...
Published: 10/3/12
Decided on the Battlefield (2012)
Author David Alan Johnson, a biographer of J. Edgar Hoover, makes his first foray into Civil War history with this vivid though ultimately flawed account of Lincoln’s re-election campaign and...
Published: 9/26/12
Worthy of the Cause for Which They Fight (2011)
Daniel Harris Reynolds won fame as a general leading Arkansas troops in the Army of Tennessee, but he was a native of Ohio, where he graduated from Ohio Wesleyan University....
Published: 9/19/12
Suite Harmonic (2011)
Emily Meier’s heavily researched Suite Harmonic: A Civil War Novel of Rediscovery imaginatively recounts the Given family history—in particular John Given Jr. and sister Catherine (Kate)—from 1862 through 1898. She narrates...
Published: 9/16/12
Death and the Civil War (2012)
The camera pans across a photograph as voices you vaguely recognize speak the words of Americans long dead. Live action shots show rolling hills at dawn, shrouded in fog or...
Published: 9/12/12
War on the Waters (2012)
War on the Waters: The Union & Confederate Navies, 1861-1865, is a comprehensive account of naval operations during the American Civil War by prize-winning historian James McPherson. Union and Confederate...
Published: 9/5/12
Remembering the Battle of the Crater (2012)
In early November 1903, nearly 20,000 people gathered in Petersburg, Virginia, anxiously awaiting a reenactment of the Battle of the Crater. For one seventeen year old, Douglas Southall Freeman, the...
Published: 8/29/12
The Mary Lincoln Enigma (2012)
On September 24, 2012, in Chicago, and on October 1 in Springfield, Mary Todd Lincoln will be retried on the charge of insanity. Perhaps she will fare better than at...