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: 12/7/11
Tejanos in Gray (2011)
Historians consistently underestimate the ethnic diversity of the Confederacy. Regimental muster rolls from Texas, Louisiana, and other western states abound in German, Irish, French, and Spanish surnames. Until recently, these...
Published: 11/30/11
Civil War Citizens (2010)
Civil War Citizens: Race, Ethnicity, and Identity in America’s Bloodiest Conflict is the first effort to examine in one book the wartime experiences of Jewish, Irish, African, Native, and German Americans....
Published: 11/30/11
The Body of John Merryman (2011)
Among the battles that Abraham Lincoln fought to restore the Union—against the Confederacy, against the opposition party, against members of his own party—his dealings with the Supreme Court and Chief...
Published: 11/23/11
Border War (2010)
In this well-researched and convincing work, distinguished historian Stanley Harrold departs from a traditional North-versus-South tale of sectional breakdown in the decades leading to the Civil War. Instead, he presents...
Published: 11/16/11
The Big House After Slavery (2010)
Amy Feely Morsman’s The Big House After Slavery examines changing gender relations among married elites in post-emancipation Virginia. Drawing from family papers, diaries, newspapers, and periodicals, Morsman argues that the...
Published: 11/9/11
Going Back the Way They Came (2011) & I Will Give Them One More Shot (2011)
It was in the 1950s when historian Bruce Catton first called attention to the value of Civil War regimental studies. These personal collections of experiences and quotations by the men...
Published: 11/2/11
General Braxton Bragg, C.S.A. (2011)
A consensus among many Civil War historians is that the Confederacy lost the conflict in the West, the vast region between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi River. Union armies...
Published: 10/26/11
Soldiering in the Army of Northern Virginia (2011)
As Joseph Glatthaar argues in his new study, “scholarship that focuses on soldiers is stuck” (xiii). Over the last few years, historians have engaged in a roaring debate about the...
Published: 10/26/11
The Iron Way (2011)
William G. Thomas’s The Iron Way is a tour-de-force, and offers a series of bracing insights about the origins, shape and outcome of the Civil War. Thomas argues that the railroads...
Published: 10/19/11
Near Andersonville (2010)
Americans tend to imagine their Civil War through a montage of images. For most, this visual archive is littered by the sepia-toned portraits and Ken-Burns-styled landscapes. Color photos of tranquil...
Published: 10/19/11
The Long Shadow of the Civil War (2010)
“Few histories,” Victoria Bynum laments, “are buried faster or deeper than those of political or social dissenters” (148). By resurrecting the histories of three anti-secessionist communities in the South, Bynum’s...
Published: 10/12/11
Confederate Reckoning (2010)
Stephanie McCurry’s latest work offers a welcomed examination of the “Confederate Project” as it existed from 1860 to 1865. Throughout her analysis, she clearly illustrates that the fundamental pro-slavery ideologies...
Published: 10/12/11
Sing Not War (2011)
Civil War veterans were everywhere in late-nineteenth century America. Virtually everyone had a relative or knew someone who once donned Union blue or Confederate gray. Union veterans paraded on Memorial...
Published: 10/5/11
Weirding the War (2011)
What we have here is an excellent collection with a terrible title. (I confess I am a curmudgeon about titles. It is time to stop torturing nouns by turning them...
Published: 9/28/11
The Union War (2011)
Ken Burns’ Civil War series made famous Rhode Island soldier Elisha Hunt Rhodes’s phrase, “All for the Union.” Gary W. Gallagher agrees with Rhodes and emphasizes that, for northerners, the...
Published: 9/28/11
1861: The Civil War Awakening (2011)
Adam Goodheart’s much heralded 1861: The Civil War Awakening is an eloquent, innovative, and deeply researched collection of chapter-length vignettes that surveys a variety of events at the outset of our...
Published: 9/16/11
A few words on The Bookshelf
Greetings and welcome to the official digital headquarters of book reviews for The Civil War Monitor. In much the same way that printed editions of the Monitor will attempt to bridge the...
Published: 9/16/11
The 4th Michigan Infantry in the Civil War (2010)
Since the turn toward social and cultural history in the 1960s and 1970s, many academic institutions have relegated military history to the virtual back burner of “serious” scholarly endeavors. Military...