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: 11/1/23
A Constant Reminder to All (2022)
The historian E. Merton Coulter famously quipped that Kentucky “waited until after the war to secede from the Union.” Though neighboring West Virginia “seceded from secession” during the Civil War—adding...
Published: 10/25/23
July 22 (2023)
Atlanta. Crown jewel of the Confederacy and Gate City into the Deep South. Atlanta. The prize of a four-month red dirt minuet between the relentless advance of three Union armies—100,000...
Published: 10/18/23
Sand, Science, and the Civil War (2023)
It is always refreshing to see a novel approach to a topic as endlessly studied as the Civil War, and this is precisely what Scott Hippensteel has delivered in Sand,...
Published: 10/11/23
Union General (2023)
William L. Shea is a prolific scholar of the U.S. Civil War in the Western and Trans-Mississippi Theaters. He has co-authored, with Earl J. Hess, Pea Ridge: Civil War Campaign...
Published: 10/4/23
The Southern Way of Life (2023)
This book is a masterful study. Attempting a single-volume history and analysis of “the concepts that reveal an ongoing southern consciousness” (5) from the colonial period through present day is...
Published: 9/27/23
Heartsick and Astonished (2023)
Historians have long been interested in the Civil War’s impact on families—particularly how wives transformed into widows and children made fatherless by what occurred on the battlefield mourned, coped, and...
Published: 9/20/23
Lincoln Illuminated and Remembered (2023)
Across a career spanning nearly six decades, historian William C. Harris has produced important books on virtually every facet of the sixteenth president’s life, ranging from his political ascent (Lincoln’s...
Published: 9/13/23
Consent in the Presence of Force (2023)
Consent in the Presence of Force analyzes “the lives, labors, and legal battles of girls and women whose enslavement was defined by sexual service” (9). Emily A. Owens, currently David and...
Published: 9/6/23
Private No More (2023)
What makes Private No More: The Civil War Letters of John Lovejoy Murray, 102nd United States Colored Infantry an unusual book? First, letters from a private in an African American regiment are...
Published: 8/30/23
The Battle of Gettysburg 1863 (2023)
Osprey Publishing has long set the standard for handsomely illustrated volumes of military history, and the latest in their growing Civil War series, Timothy J. Orr’s The Battle of Gettysburg:...
Published: 8/23/23
The Demands of Justice (2023)
The Demands of Justice examines “the lives of enslaved women accused of capital crimes to understand how slavery and its corresponding laws and social customs worked to criminalize them and limit...
Published: 8/18/23
President Garfield (2023)
He was the first front porch campaigner and the last president born in a log cabin. After eking by former Union general Winfield Scott Hancock with the closest popular vote...
Published: 8/9/23
The Grimkes (2022)
Among the leading African American professionals at the turn of the 20th century were brothers Archibald and Francis Grimke. The former served as U.S. consul to the Dominican Republic, while...
Published: 8/2/23
Small But Important Riots (2023)
By the author’s own admission, Small but Important Riots has been a lifetime commitment. “Nearly thirty years of continuing research into the events that transpired in and around the Loudoun Valley...
Published: 7/26/23
Colonel Hans Christian Heg (2023)
Tens of thousands of foreign-born and first- or second-generation immigrants served in the U.S. Army during the Civil War. Historians have focused extensively on large immigrant groups, like the Germans...
Published: 7/19/23
The Grammar of Civil War (2022)
Will Fowler, currently professor of Latin American studies at the University of St. Andrews, is a highly accomplished scholar of nineteenth century Mexico. His Santa Anna of Mexico offers a revisionist...
Published: 7/11/23
Without Concealment, Without Compromise (2023)
One might suppose there is nothing new to learn about the Civil War era. Jill L. Newmark’s splendid new monograph, Without Concealment, Without Compromise: The Courageous Lives of Black Civil...
Published: 7/5/23
Cherokee Civil Warrior (2023)
W. Dale Weeks makes clear that his biography of the long-serving Cherokee chief John Ross does not focus on Ross’s involvement in the Civil War, despite its title. For Weeks,...