Published: 4/19/23The Democratic Collapse (2022)By: J. Matthew WardCategory: Book Reviews Lauren Haumesser’s excellent book is a welcome addition to antebellum political history and gender studies. She convincingly argues that Northern Democrats, Southern Democrats, and Republicans all shared gender ideals—the independent,...
Published: 4/12/23The Fifth Border State (2023)By: Jonathan A. NoyalasCategory: Book Reviews Three decades after the Civil War, Theodore Lang, a veteran of the 6th West Virginia Cavalry, published Loyal West Virginia. While Lang’s volume focuses mainly on the service of troops...
Published: 4/5/23Young America (2022)By: Benjamin E. ParkCategory: Book Reviews There is a common narrative that America’s two-party system, created by battles between the Democrats and Whigs during the 1830s and 1840s, fell apart at the dawn of the sectional...
Published: 3/29/23Unsung Hero of Gettysburg (2021)By: Codie EashCategory: Book Reviews When it comes to cavalry commanders at the Battle of Gettysburg, several figures—Stuart, Custer, and Buford, to name a few—instantly come to mind. Despite an admirable record, one federal divisional...
Published: 3/22/23Lincoln: The Fire of Genius (2022)By: Jonathan TraceyCategory: Book Reviews Plenty of people who study the Civil War have heard accounts of Lincoln testing out the new, breech-loading Spencer repeating rifle behind the Executive Mansion. Was this a one-off event,...
Published: 3/15/23The End of Public Execution (2022)By: Aaron David HyamsCategory: Book Reviews One of the most enduring symbols of state violence in the New South is the electric chair, a gruesome tool of capital punishment contained deep within the brick walls and...
Published: 3/8/23Civil Wars and Reconstructions in the Americas (2022)By: Chase H. McCarterCategory: Book Reviews Scholars of the U.S. Civil War era have done much over the past two decades to illuminate the transnational dimensions of the period. In particular, they have shown that the...
Published: 3/2/23Mourning the Presidents (2023)By: Brian Matthew JordanCategory: Book Reviews In this accessible and engaging volume, noted presidential historians Lindsay M. Chervinsky and Matthew R. Costello assemble a dozen essays that treat how our nation’s commanders in chief have been...
Published: 2/23/23Their Maryland (2021)By: James J. BroomallCategory: Book Reviews By late September 1862, the soldiers in the Army of Northern Virginia were frustrated. One Virginia private cursed the “infernal” Potomac River, and a Georgia sergeant told his fiancée he...
Published: 2/22/23Administering Freedom (2022)By: Evan C. RotheraCategory: Book Reviews Administering Freedom opens by recalling William Baltimore’s interview with a member of the Federals Writers’ Project in the late 1930s. Baltimore fled to the Union Army in 1863, enlisted in the...
Published: 2/20/23The Union Forever (2012)By: Matthew NormanCategory: Book Reviews We are currently in the midst of a U.S. Grant renaissance. Recent studies by Brooks Simpson, Jean Smith, Joan Waugh and H.W. Brands have sought to rehabilitate the reputation of...
Published: 2/15/23Lady Rebels of Civil War Missouri (2022)By: John SarvelaCategory: Book Reviews In Lady Rebels of Civil War Missouri, Larry Wood takes readers into the most complex and contentious period of Missouri’s history to detail the lives of seventeen female Confederate sympathizers....
Published: 2/8/23Gettysburg’s Southern Front (2022)By: Jonathan M. SteplykCategory: Book Reviews Thousands of books have been written about the Gettysburg Campaign, yet talented scholars with fresh insights continue to prove the last has not been said about our most studied military...
Published: 2/1/23I Saw Death Coming (2023)By: Jennifer AndrellaCategory: Book Reviews The process of Reconstruction after the Civil War is one of the most critical, yet ambiguous periods of US history. One of the key reasons why Reconstruction has remained so...
Published: 1/25/23The Tale Untwisted (2023)By: Brian Matthew JordanCategory: Book Reviews On Saturday, September 13, 1862, a Hoosier private stumbled upon a stray copy of Robert E. Lee’s Special Orders No. 191 near Frederick, Maryland. The discovery of the “Lost Orders”...
Published: 1/18/23Ways and Means (2022)By: Gordon BergCategory: Book Reviews Some have characterized economics as the dismal science. Roger Lowenstein didn’t get that memo. The author of critically acclaimed books on Wall Street and modern financial arrangements, Lowenstein has turned...
Published: 1/11/23Six Miles from Charleston, Five Minutes to Hell (2022)By: A.J. BlaylockCategory: Book Reviews James A. Morgan takes readers on a trip around South Carolina’s early Civil War battlefields in the Emerging Civil War Series’ latest offering, Six Miles from Charleston, Five Minutes to...
Published: 1/4/23Contemners and Serpents (2022)By: George C. RableCategory: Book Reviews Contemners and Serpents presents the correspondence of a family who had lived in Pennsylvania and Ohio, served as Presbyterian missionaries in India, but ended up in Georgia, Tennessee, and South...
Published: 12/28/22“If We are Striking for Pennsylvania” (2022)By: Codie EashCategory: Book Reviews Most entries in the Gettysburg Campaign’s extensive bibliography treat the events of July 1, 2, and 3, 1863. Historians have supplied readers with operational studies; accounts that focus on particular...
Published: 12/21/22C. Vann Woodward (2022)By: Aaron David HyamsCategory: Book Reviews For anyone who teaches, writes, or reads Southern History, C. Vann Woodward (1908-1999) stands out as a figure of singular importance. Born to humble origins in the woods of Arkansas,...