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: 2/26/20
Congress at War (2020)
The history of Civil War politics has often been focused on Abraham Lincoln’s statesmanship, management of his feuding Cabinet, and ability to steer the country towards emancipation. Fergus M. Bordewich...
Published: 2/19/20
Rebel Guerrillas (2018)
In a narrative history of the Civil War’s western and eastern theaters, Paul Williams studies three of the Confederate Army’s most prominent irregular warriors: John Mosby, William Quantrill, and “Bloody...
Published: 2/12/20
Armies of Deliverance (2019)
As a National Park Service interpretive ranger and now as a college educator, I have been asked innumerable times to recommend the best one-volume book on the Civil War. Without...
Published: 2/5/20
British Blockade Runners in the American Civil War (2019)
On April 19, 1861, less than a week after the cannon roar in Charleston harbor that marked the opening of U.S. Civil War had ceased, President Abraham Lincoln announced a...
Published: 1/29/20
When It Was Grand (2020)
The term radical originated with the Latin radix, or source, and it has always had popular connections with the steely determination to tear-up obnoxious ideas or movements by their roots. It came...
Published: 1/22/20
Civil War Monuments and the Militarization of America (2019)
In many ways, the United States is a warrior nation. With bases across the globe and currently involved in multiple conflicts, it has a national anthem (officially adopted in 1931)...
Published: 1/15/20
Living By Inches (2019)
Despite many gloomy predictions, the sesquicentennial hardly proved the twilight of Civil War scholarship. To the contrary, the field may be entering its most fecund period to date as historians...
Published: 1/8/20
“Our Little Monitor” (2018)
Why another Monitor book? In Our Little Monitor, authors Anna Holloway and Jonathan W. White demonstrate that a fascinating subject is never exhausted. Cutting-edge maritime archaeology and thorough historical research combine to produce an engaging...
Published: 1/1/20
Abraham Lincoln’s Statesmanship and the Limits of Liberal Democracy (2019)
As we come to the end of the decade following the bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln’s birth, there is no discernable slowdown in the publication of books on the sixteenth president....
Published: 12/25/19
Bicycling Gettysburg (2019)
The battle fought on July 1, 2, and 3, 1863, in Adams County, Pennsylvania, “has brought the name of Gettysburg from rural obscurity, to world-wide celebrity,” wrote historian and landscape...
Published: 12/18/19
Too Useful to Sacrifice (2019)
George B. McClellan has now received his day in court. In five chapters detailing Little Mac’s conduct during the 1862 Maryland Campaign, Steven Stotelmyer takes up the defense attorney’s pen...
Published: 12/11/19
William Gregg’s Civil War (2019)
Joseph M. Beilein Jr. promises “a hellish and invigorating ride” through Missouri’s guerrilla war, and in that respect William Gregg’s memoir does not disappoint. Gregg’s prose is brisk and lively...
Published: 12/4/19
The Million-Dollar Man Who Helped Kill a President (2018)
The names and facts surrounding the April 1865 assassination of President Abraham Lincoln are well-known. Actor John Wilkes Booth, a Maryland native and fierce Confederate sympathizer, led a group originally...
Published: 11/27/19
Darkness at Chancellorsville (2019)
Delve into Ralph Peter's "Darkness at Chancellorsville," a gripping Civil War novel that combines historical accuracy with a captivating storyline.
Published: 11/20/19
Hymns of the Republic (2019)
Explore the dramatic events of the American Civil War's final year in "Hymns of the Republic." Join Ulysses S. Grant's campaign against Robert E. Lee and witness the decisive moments of the conflict.
Published: 11/13/19
Conquered (2019)
Explore the failures and challenges faced by the Army of Tennessee during the American Civil War in "Conquered" by Larry J. Daniel.
Published: 11/6/19
Lincoln’s Spies (2019)
In his study on northern spies, Douglas Waller focuses on Allan Pinkerton, Lafayette Baker, George Sharpe, and Van Lew ... [who] ran their missions in the Eastern Theater, which, according to Waller, was the “crucial region for the war.”
Published: 10/30/19
The Black Heavens (2019)
Brian R. Dirck has spent his career approaching the life of Abraham Lincoln from some oblique angles. Published in 2001, his first book offered an illuminating comparison of Lincoln and...