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: 8/4/21
The Bonds of War (2021)
Recent years have witnessed a growth in the use of the unit history as a vehicle for exploring the Civil War soldier. Scholars such as Lesley J. Gordon, Susannah Ural,...
Published: 7/28/21
No Place for Glory (2021)
Robert J. Wynstra has established himself as one of the Gettysburg Campaign’s most capable modern scholars. His prize-winning At the Forefront of Lee’s Invasion: Retribution, Plunder, and Clashing Cultures on...
Published: 7/21/21
West of Slavery (2021)
As an historian of the Civil War’s westernmost reaches, I have been eagerly anticipating the publication of Kevin Waite’s West of Slavery: The Southern Dream of a Transcontinental Empire. Waite’s...
Published: 7/14/21
Civil War Richmond (2021)
In the vast realm of Civil War studies, few individual cities have received the attention paid Richmond, Virginia. Scores of books—ranging from the memoirs of its contemporary residents to modern...
Published: 7/7/21
Faces of Union Soldiers at South Mountain & Harpers Ferry (2021)
Bell Irvin Wiley’s books, The Life of Johnny Reb and The Life of Billy Yank, written over seventy years ago, were milestones in Civil War historiography. Combing through thousands of sources, especially soldiers’...
Published: 6/30/21
A Mortal Blow to the Confederacy (2021)
When one thinks of the Civil War, they often think of the blood-soaked battlefields between Washington, D.C., and Richmond. This “Virginia-centric” mindset has dominated the historiographical landscape for much of...
Published: 6/23/21
Abandoned Coastal Defenses of Alabama (2021)
In Abandoned Coastal Defenses of Alabama, Thomas Kenning provides a brief history of Fort Morgan and Fort Gaines, two island bastions off the coast of Mobile, Alabama. However, Kenning’s book is...
Published: 6/16/21
Civil War Supply and Strategy (2020)
Earl J. Hess is an exceptionally productive historian of the U.S. Civil War. Recently retired from Lincoln Memorial University, where he held the Stewart McClelland Chair in History, Hess has...
Published: 6/9/21
Embattled Capital (2021)
Since the sesquicentennial of “America’s defining event” nearly a decade ago, the Emerging Civil War Series has produced dozens of books on an ever-growing list of topics. These concise titles...
Published: 6/2/21
Meade and Lee at Rappahannock Station (2021)
While a bewildering number of books have been published about the Gettysburg Campaign and a considerable amount of ink has been spilled on the Wilderness Campaign, the absence of scholarship...
Published: 5/26/21
The Howling Storm (2020)
The Civil War was fought outside. This seems like an obvious fact, but it has an important, though often overlooked implication. Because the war was fought outside, humans were not...
Published: 5/19/21
Imagining Wild Bill (2020)
Paul Ashdown and Edward Caudill, veteran biographers who have tackled many of the central figures of the Civil War era—including John Mosby, Nathan Bedford Forrest, Custer, and William Tecumseh Sherman—turn...
Published: 5/12/21
Christian Citizens (2020)
In Christian Citizens, Elizabeth L. Jemison uncovers the links between Christianity, race, and white paternalism that were solidified during the Reconstruction era. An assistant professor of religion at Clemson University,...
Published: 5/5/21
Whisperwood (2020)
Whisperwood’s protagonist, Private Anderson Flowers, is based on stories passed down about author Van Temple’s great-grandfather, who shouldered a musket on behalf of the Confederacy in the 20th Mississippi. Narrated from...
Published: 4/28/21
The Assault on Fort Blakeley (2021)
In the four years of the Civil War, Mobile, Alabama, made itself into the best defended city in the Confederacy. Its three lines of land defenses and the multitude of...
Published: 4/21/21
The Last Slave Ships (2020)
In 1808, the U.S. government made it illegal to import enslaved Africans into the United States. Twelve years later Congress went a step further, declaring participation in the Atlantic slave...
Published: 4/14/21
What Though the Field Be Lost (2021)
Christopher Kempf has written an excellent series of poetic reflections on the crossroads of past and present at Gettysburg. How does one size up the present in terms of the...
Published: 4/7/21
Incidents in the Life of Cecilia Lawton (2021)
Cecilia Lawton, the daughter of a wealthy Georgia plantation owner and enslaver, was just fourteen years old when the Civil War began, but the exigencies of war forced her to...