Scheduled for MAY 20241: • Dranesville: A Northern Virginia Town in the Crossfire of a Forgotten Battle, December 20, 1861 by Ryan Quint. • Wide Awake: The Forgotten Force that Elected Lincoln and Spurred the Civil War by Jon Grinspan. • The Inland Campaign for Vicksburg: Five Battles in Seventeen Days, May 1-17, 1863 by Timothy Smith. • Voices from Gettysburg: Letters, Papers, and Memoirs ..read more

New Arrival: • Ink, Dirt and Powder Smoke: The Civil War Letters of William F. Keeler, Paymaster on the USS Monitor edited by Charles W. McLandress (Author-Seal River Pub, 2023). From the description: "William F. Keeler’s superbly vivid letters from the USS Monitor and USS Florida are essential classics for Civil War scholars and amateurs alike. His letters from the Monitor provide the most ..read more

[Miserable Little Conglomeration: A Social History of the Port Hudson Campaign by Christopher Thrasher (University of Tennessee Press, 2023). Hardcover, maps, photos, illustrations, orders of battle appendix, notes, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:xxxi,319/434. ISBN:978-1-62190-791-6. $45] The fortified citadel of Port Hudson, Louisiana was arguably just as important as Vicksburg ..read more

New Arrival: • Union "Tales the War" in the Trans-Mississippi - Part 1: 1861 edited by Michael E. Banasik (Camp Pope Pub, 2024). With all five Confederate titles of Volume VII finished and well out the door, Camp Pope Publishing has now officially launched the first installment of Volume VIII, the Union compilation of newspaper reminiscences published by The Missouri Republican in its Saturday ..read more

New Arrival: • An Ornament to His Country: The Life and Military Career of Benjamin Franklin Davis by Sharon A. Murray (Author, 2023). After a long period of undue neglect, an impressive amount of detailed coverage of eastern theater Union cavalry leaders and operations has been published over the past two decades. This recent body of literature has exposed readers to a number of brigade and ..read more

New Arrival: • North Carolina Troops, 1861-1865: A Roster, Volume XXII - Confederate States Navy, Confederate States Marine Corps, and Charlotte Naval Yard edited by Katelynn A. Hatton & Alex Christopher Meekins (NC Office of Archives and History, 2024). I've long been curious about the North Carolina Troops, 1861-1865: A Roster series. Having started its journey way back in 1961 during ..read more

New Arrival: • Storming the Heights: A Guide to the Battle of Chattanooga, Revised Second Edition by Matt Spruill (U Tenn Press, 2024). Jay Luvaas and Harold Nelson's The U.S. Army War College Guide series pioneered a Civil War battlefield touring and staff ride format that has stood the test of time. I believe that the most recent volume published under the War College imprimatur was Bowery ..read more

New Arrival: • The Army under Fire: The Politics of Antimilitarism in the Civil War Era by Cecily N. Zander (LSU Press, 2024). Given how often the topic is mentioned in the literature, every Civil War reader possesses at the very least a passing recognition of the pre-20th century American public's mistrust of large standing armies and their questioning of the value (and prudence) of nurturing ..read more

New Arrival: • The Fabric of Civil War Society: Uniforms, Badges, and Flags, 1859–1939 by Shae Smith Cox (LSU Press, 2024). Academic studies of Civil War material culture are few and far between, but each new one is always welcome in my book. Recognizing that "(m)ilitary uniforms, badges, flags, and other material objects have been used to represent the identity of Americans throughout history ..read more

New Arrival: • Abraham Lincoln and Women in Film: One Hundred Years of Hollywood Mythmaking by Frank J. Wetta & Martin A. Novelli (LSU Press, 2024). In all the years I've been doing this I've never been offered a review copy of a book that examines depictions of the American Civil War on film and television screens. What makes it more surprising is that Google tells me that there are quite ..read more