Published: 9/8/21A Fire in the Wilderness (2021)By: Jeffry D. WertCategory: Book Reviews The two-day battle fought in the Wilderness of Spotsylvania on May 5 and 6, 1864, opened the Overland Campaign and the famous confrontation between Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E....
Published: 9/1/21A Holy Baptism of Fire & Blood (2021)By: Caleb W. SouthernCategory: Book Reviews Historians of the U.S. Civil War have long recognized the power and centrality of religion during the nation’s defining struggle. James P. Byrd has entered the conversation with the goal...
Published: 8/25/21Unlike Anything That Ever Floated (2021)By: J. Ross DancyCategory: Book Reviews From the very first shots of the Civil War, it was apparent that control of maritime access to the self-proclaimed Confederate States would play a crucial role in the conflict’s...
Published: 8/18/21The First Reconstruction (2021)By: Lucien HolnessCategory: Book Reviews The First Reconstruction provides a new account of northern party politics during the early republic that places Black men’s participation in electoral politics at the center of the narrative. For...
Published: 8/11/21Grand Army of Labor (2021)By: David A. ZondermanCategory: Book Reviews The memory and meaning of the Civil War exerted a profound and expansive influence on American workers for decades after the conflict concluded. Matthew Stanley’s Grand Army of Labor is a...
Published: 8/4/21The Bonds of War (2021)By: Damian ShielsCategory: Book Reviews 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: 7/28/21No Place for Glory (2021)By: Robert L. GlazeCategory: Book Reviews 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: 7/21/21West of Slavery (2021)By: Cecily N. ZanderCategory: Book Reviews 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: 7/14/21Civil War Richmond (2021)By: Codie EashCategory: Book Reviews 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: 7/7/21Faces of Union Soldiers at South Mountain & Harpers Ferry (2021)By: Eugene D. SchmielCategory: Book Reviews 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: 6/30/21A Mortal Blow to the Confederacy (2021)By: Riley SullivanCategory: Book Reviews 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: 6/23/21Abandoned Coastal Defenses of Alabama (2021)By: William BaileyCategory: Book Reviews 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: 6/16/21Civil War Supply and Strategy (2020)By: Evan C. RotheraCategory: Book Reviews 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: 6/9/21Embattled Capital (2021)By: Codie EashCategory: Book Reviews 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: 6/2/21Meade and Lee at Rappahannock Station (2021)By: Jonathan A. NoyalasCategory: Book Reviews 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: 5/26/21The Howling Storm (2020)By: Lindsay R.S. PrivetteCategory: Book Reviews 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: 5/19/21Imagining Wild Bill (2020)By: Aaron David HyamsCategory: Book Reviews 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: 5/12/21Christian Citizens (2020)By: Caleb W. SouthernCategory: Book Reviews 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: 5/5/21Whisperwood (2020)By: Aaron David HyamsCategory: Book Reviews 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: 4/28/21The Assault on Fort Blakeley (2021)By: John C. WaughCategory: Book Reviews 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...