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: 6/8/22
Gettysburg’s Lost Love Story (2022)
History is replete with heart-rending stories of star-crossed lovers. Marc Anthony and Cleopatra, Queen Elizabeth and the Earl of Essex, Admiral Horatio Nelson and Lady Emma Hamilton, General John Reynolds...
Published: 6/1/22
Love & Duty (2022)
Historian Angela Esco Elder’s debut monograph joins a growing body of scholarship probing the lived consequences of the Civil War. Complementing recent work by Diane Miller Sommerville, Brian Craig Miller,...
Published: 5/25/22
Salmon P. Chase (2022)
Following up on his popular biographies of Secretary of State William Seward [2012] and Secretary of War Edwin Stanton [2017], Walter Stahr’s most recent book tells the story of Lincoln’s...
Published: 5/18/22
Back From Battle (2021)
“Camp Discharge never got its monument,” writes Jim Remsen. “If it weren’t for the military records, memoirs, and news clippings, one could think the place never existed.” Fortunately for the...
Published: 5/11/22
Hell’s Half-Acre (2022)
The discovery of the remains of at least a dozen murder victims on a homestead plot in Labette County, Kansas, in 1873, launched a manhunt across the Western prairie and...
Published: 5/4/22
Harriet Tubman (2022)
Throughout the nineteenth and early-twentieth-centuries, Harriet Tubman was undoubtedly one of the most influential abolitionists and women’s rights activists. Her historical experience, as demonstrated by recent debates over replacing Andrew...
Published: 4/20/22
First Fallen (2021)
In this work, Meg Groeling explores Elmer Ellsworth, the first Union Civil War hero. Most historians know Ellsworth for the end of his life, when he was shot and killed...
Published: 4/13/22
Our Comfort in Dying (2021)
The Reverend Robert Lewis Dabney had already made a name for himself in Christian circles when the Civil War broke out. The war’s onset found him a Presbyterian pastor and...
Published: 4/6/22
A House Built By Slaves (2022)
For many years, historians have debated the answer to the question, “who freed the slaves?” One camp, headed by James M. McPherson, argued for the centrality of President Abraham Lincoln...
Published: 4/5/22
To Address You as My Friend (2021)
Abraham Lincoln’s relationship with African Americans has long held a particular fascination for historians—and understandably so, given his status as the author of the Emancipation Proclamation. Most focus their attention...
Published: 3/30/22
Elusive Utopia (2018)
Racism continues to grip the United States, and many Americans are asking, “why?” The answer requires historical context that traces the nation’s long lineage of racial inequality and examines how...
Published: 3/23/22
Civil War Witnesses and Their Books (2021)
Civil War Witnesses collects eight, carefully crafted and extensively researched essays that deliver on the promises set forth in the subtitle. According to the editors, the works under consideration were “written...
Published: 3/16/22
Ends of War (2021)
Caroline E. Janney carefully states that Ends of War “neither examines nor excuses the motivations or purposes of Confederates as soldiers.” Instead, “it explores the war’s ending as a pivotal...
Published: 3/9/22
The Horse at Gettysburg (2021)
An estimated 80,000 horses and mules accompanied the opposing armies to Gettysburg. The Union and Confederate forces relied upon them to pull miles of supply wagons and hundreds of cannon,...
Published: 3/2/22
Contesting Commemoration (2021)
In 1876, about one in five Americans attended the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia, which celebrated the anniversary of the Declaration of Independence with an event similar to a world fair....
Published: 2/15/22
Bulldozed and Betrayed (2021)
The election of 1876 generated enormous controversy. Republican Rutherford B. Hayes, despite losing the popular vote, won the presidency by one electoral vote over Democrat Samuel J. Tilden. Hayes’s victory...
Published: 2/9/22
My Work Among the Freedmen (2021)
History seems all too seldom interested in basically “good” people, and historians often emphasize ambiguity, complexity, or irony in describing historical actors or crafting biographies. The editors of My Work...
Published: 2/2/22
Rebel Salvation (2021)
Reconstruction is often depicted as a political and policy battle between “Presidential Reconstruction,” led by President Andrew Johnson and “Congressional Reconstruction,” advocated by Radical Republicans in the United States Congress....