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The pool of excellent books published on the American
Civil War is virtually bottomless. This page represents a modest attempt
to feature some of the books CCWRT members think most highly of - both to
provide guidance for members looking for a good read, but also to create a
forum for discussion on books we've read in common. Let us know what
you're reading. (Note: all book descriptions and comments on this
page come from the publisher unless otherwise noted.)
All books featured on this page (as well
as throughout the Roundtable website) may be purchased
from Amazon.com, with part of the proceeds from each purchase being
returned to the CCWRT by Amazon in support of its education and
preservation programs. Roll-over any title on this page
to bring up purchase information on that book. For a more
complete listing of books, not only on the Civil War, but on other eras in
American history, religion, art and many other topics, please visit the Roundtable
Bookstore.
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Indicates a
past presenter to the Cleveland Civil War Roundtable |
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The Civil War: A Narrative (3 Volume Set) |
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Shelby Foote |
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1958 - 1974
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A stunning literary and historical
achievement, the three volumes of Shelby Foote’s The Civil War vividly
bring to life the four years of torment and strife that altered American
life forever. Taking the reader from the drama of
Jefferson Davis’s resignation from the United States Senate and
Abraham Lincoln’s arrival in the nation’s capital to Davis’s final
flight and capture and Lincoln’s tragic death, Foote covers his
subject with astonishing depth and scope. Every battle, every general,
and every statesman has its place in this monumental narrative, told in
lively prose that captures the sights, smells, and sounds of the
conflict. Never before have the great battles and personalities of the
Civil War been so excitingly presented, and never before has the story
been told so completely. With a novelist’s gift for narrative
and a historian’s commitment to research, Shelby Foote’s epic
retelling is the definitive account of the Civil War, a trilogy that has
earned a place of honor on the bookshelves of all Americans.
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Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (Oxford History of the United States)
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| James M. McPherson |
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1988 |
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Published in 1988 to universal acclaim,
this single-volume treatment of the Civil War quickly became recognized
as the new standard in its field. James M. McPherson, who won the
Pulitzer Prize for this book, impressively combines a brisk writing
style with an admirable thoroughness. He covers the military aspects of
the war in all of the necessary detail, and also provides a helpful
framework describing the complex economic, political, and social forces
behind the conflict. Perhaps more than any other book, this one belongs
on the bookshelf of every Civil War buff. -
Amazon.com |
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Bruce Catton's Civil War: Boxed 3 Volume Set |
| Bruce Catton |
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1961 -
1965 |
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Three Volume set includes: The Coming
Fury, Terrible Swift Sword, and Never Call Retreat. A
journalist and public official before becoming editor of American
Heritage magazine, Bruce Catton won both the Pulitzer Prize and the
National Book Award for his Civil War history A Stillness at
Appomattox. As for this monumental Civil War trilogy, first
published in the 1960s, historian Henry Steel Commager appraised:
"better than any other history of our Civil War it combines
narrative vigor, literary grace, freshness of view and independence of
judgment, and a kind of catholic spirit which embraces the whole vast
tumultuous scene." The first volume opens with the Democratic
Party's Charleston convention in 1860 and the split that resulted in two
Democratic candidates, followed by the Republican Convention and
Lincoln's victory. The country first drifted and then was swept into
war, even as Lincoln and Jefferson Davis were declaring that a peaceful
solution could be found. The second volume shows how the Union and
Confederacy slowly reconciled themselves to an all-out war, and how the
statures of Lee, Grant, Sherman, Jefferson Davis, and many others
emerged. McClellan's character is impaled here in extracts from his
arrogant letters. In the final volume, Lincoln remains resolute in the
belief that a house divided against itself cannot stand, while Jefferson
Davis struggles valiantly for political and economic stability. Catton
traces the most bitter years of the war here, from the fighting at
Fredericksburg to the surrender at Appomattox and the end of the
Confederacy, and the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. |
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American Heritage Picture History of the Civil War
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Bruce Catton & the Editors of American
Heritage Magazine
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1960
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Ask Civil War diehards when they first fell
in love with the War Between the States and there's a good chance you'll
hear about one of the early editions of this book, which was originally
published on the war's centennial. Thoroughly updated by the remarkable
James M. McPherson to take advantage of the latest scholarship, this
classic retains all of the wonderful features Bruce Catton originally
included. And then there are the pictures--they are some of the most
striking battlefield visuals available. The American Heritage New History
of the Civil War makes a great gift for young people interested (or
potentially interested) in history, or good reading for folks who want an
overview of how the North and South fought across five Aprils. -
Amazon.com
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The Civil War: An Illustrated History
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Geoffrey C. Ward, Ric Burns, Ken Burns
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1990
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Companion volume to the Ken Burns, PBS
series, this is an extraordinary collection of photos, engravings and
paintings, many published for the first time, conveying military and
political events of the Civil War, accompanied by a pungent text that
avoids sentimentality in depicting "the most horrible, necessary,
intimate, acrimonious, mean-spirited, and heroic" war in our
history. The book also includes original essays by distinguished
historians James M. McPherson and C. Vann Woodward among others, and an
edifying interview with historian Shelby Foote. - Publishers Weekly
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More on the Civil War...
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The Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant |
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Ulysses S. Grant
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1885 - 1886
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In 1862, a prominent Republican visited
President Lincoln and called General Ulysses S. Grant an incompetent
drunk who created unnecessary political problems. Lincoln, frustrated
with all his generals but this one, famously replied: "I can't
spare this man; he fights." Indeed, Lincoln had gone through a
series of unheroic generals before settling on Grant to lead the Union's
Army of the Potomac. Grant's success at marshaling the industrial might
of the North eventually pounded the South into submission. This memoir,
finished as its author was dying of throat cancer in 1885, is widely
admired for its clear and straightforward prose. The volume was an
enormously popular hit upon publication, and
today Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant ranks among the finest pieces of
military autobiography ever written. - Amazon.com
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Grant and Twain: The Story of
a Friendship That Changed America |
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Mark Perry
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2004
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The friendship of Ulysses S. Grant and Mark
Twain by no means changed America. It was, however, a remarkable and
fascinating relationship that, though already intelligently told in
numerous other volumes, is related quite well here. As Perry (A Fire in
Zion: The Israeli-Palestinian Search for Peace) relates it, in 1881 Twain
urged Grant, "out of office and out of favor" to write
his memoirs, but Grant refused. He reminded Twain that two accounts of his
military exploits (by other authors) had been unmitigated flops. A few
years later, bankrupt and afflicted with agonizing throat cancer, Grant
finally agreed to write four articles for the Century Magazine on some of
his Civil War battles. The Century also offered to publish his memoirs.
Twain, on hearing Grant might be willing to write a book, hurried back to
New York from a lecture tour to scoop the project away from the Century
and arrange for publication by a small firm he controlled. Once the deal
was done, Grant labored in a grim race to finish his narrative before
cancer finished him. He completed his story, "a masterpiece of
fluent directness containing absolutely vital insights on Union army
command strategies" in July 1885 and died soon after. Published a
few months later, the Memoirs have never since been out of print. Perry
does an excellent job of narrating Grant's and Twain's parallel lives and
showing how their intersection at the end of Grant's life led to the
creation of an American classic. - Publishers Weekly
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Robert E. Lee: A Biography
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Emory M. Thomas
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1995
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Thomas, a distinguished historian of the
Civil War (The Confederacy as a Revolutionary Experience), has written a
major analytical biography of Robert E. Lee. Synthesizing printed and
manuscript sources, he presents Lee as neither the icon of Douglas
Southall Freeman nor the flawed figure presented by Thomas Connolly. Lee
emerges instead as a man of paradoxes, whose frustrations and tribulations
were the basis for his heroism. Lee's work was his play, according to the
author, and throughout his life he made the best of his lot. Believing
that evil springs from selfishness, he found release in service to his
family, his country and, not least, to the men he led. One of history's
great captains and most beloved generals, he refused to take himself too
seriously. This comic vision of life ultimately shaped an individual who
was both more and less than his legend. Highly recommended. - Publishers Weekly
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Lee
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Douglas Southall Freeman
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1934 - 1935
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When he was approached by Charles Scribner's
Sons in 1915 with the request for a biography of Gen. Robert E. Lee, CSA,
Douglas Southall Freeman embarked on a 19-year journey that would finally
produce the epic four-volume R. E. LEE in 1934. This set won a Pulitzer
Prize in 1935 and has become one of the most respected biographies ever
written.
Freeman, realizing that many biographies
of Lee had been written prior to his accepting the task, sought sources
that had been rarely, if ever, consulted. These sources included: the
records of the Bureau of Engineers and of the United States Military
Academy; collections of Southern families that included Lee's letters;
correspondence and memoirs of those who served with and against him in the
War Between The States; and the files of Washington and Lee University.
The portrait of Lee that Freeman paints
in these four volumes is that of a true leader, who was loved by his
troops and respected by those who opposed him. Lee was able to exhibit
some of the best qualities of humanity in some of the most inhumane
situations. In example after example, Freeman introduces us to this noble
Victorian. Along with its companion set, Lee's
Lieutenants (also by Freeman), R. E. Lee provides a realistic,
informative and sympathetic portrait of "Marse Robert", a man
loved and respected in victory and defeat. - C. Dickens Books
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Commander of All Lincoln's Armies : A Life of General Henry W. Halleck |
| John F. Marszalek |
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2004 |
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Civil War biographies do not come much
better, if at all, than John F. Marszalek's account of Henry Wager
Halleck. Written with scholarly precision and aplomb, it recounts the
life and contributions of the Union's top soldier, 1862–1864, from his
childhood on a New York farm...Researched in depth, closely reasoned,
and energetically presented, Marszalek's biography will long remain the
standard account of Lincoln's commander in chief. - Journal of
American History |
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The Monitor Chronicles : One Sailor's Account.
Today's Campaign to Recover the Civil War Wreck
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George S. Geer
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2000
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In 1862, George Geer boarded the U.S.S.
Monitor as a fireman and engineer and stepped into history. In regular
correspondence with his wife back in New York, he recorded the workings of
the machinery and crew on the newfangled "cheesebox on a raft,"
as the Union ironclad was called. He also described the famous battle
between the Monitor and the Merrimac, the posturing of commanders, and the
sinking of the Monitor off the coast of North Carolina during a storm in
1863. This book collects Geer's very readable and revealing letters and
augments them with an intelligent commentary on Union naval technology as
well as the combined naval and military operations during the Peninsula
campaign of 1862. A biography of Geer is included, while a concluding
chapter surveys recent efforts to raise the Monitor from her watery grave.
Whatever the success of the latter enterprise, this book triumphs as the
best inside-the-hull account of life aboard an ironclad and gives Civil
War sailors a rare voice in a subject area crowded with soldiers' accounts
and the preoccupation with the war on land. - Library Journal
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Other biographies you might find
interesting...
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Lincoln |
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David Herbert Donald |
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1996
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Winner of two Pulitzer Prizes, Donald proves
himself the superb biographer of Lincoln. Donald's profile of the 16th
president focuses entirely on Lincoln, seldom straying from the subject.
It looks primarily at what Lincoln "knew, when he knew it, and why he
made his decisions." Donald's Lincoln emerges as ambitious, often
defeated, tormented by his married life, but with a remarkable capacity
for growth and the nation's greatest president. What really stands out in
a lively narrative are Lincoln's abilities to hold together a nation of
vastly diverse regional interests during the turmoil and tragedy of the
Civil War. - Library Journal
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Team of
Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln
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Doris Kearns Goodwin |
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2006
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The life and times of Abraham Lincoln have
been analyzed and dissected in countless books. Do we need another Lincoln
biography? In Team of Rivals, esteemed historian Doris Kearns Goodwin
proves that we do. Though she can't help but cover some familiar
territory, her perspective is focused enough to offer fresh insights into
Lincoln's leadership style and his deep understanding of human behavior
and motivation. Goodwin makes the case for Lincoln's political genius by
examining his relationships with three men he selected for his cabinet,
all of whom were opponents for the Republican nomination in 1860: William
H. Seward, Salmon P. Chase, and Edward Bates.
These men, all accomplished, nationally
known, and presidential, originally disdained Lincoln for his backwoods
upbringing and lack of experience, and were shocked and humiliated at
losing to this relatively obscure Illinois lawyer. Yet Lincoln not only
convinced them to join his administration -- Seward as secretary of state,
Chase as secretary of the treasury, and Bates as attorney general--he
ultimately gained their admiration and respect as well. How he soothed
egos, turned rivals into allies, and dealt with many challenges to his
leadership, all for the sake of the greater good, is largely what
Goodwin's fine book is about. Had he not possessed the wisdom and
confidence to select and work with the best people, she argues, he could
not have led the nation through one of its darkest periods.
Ten years in the making, this engaging
work reveals why "Lincoln's road to success was longer, more
tortuous, and far less likely" than the other men, and why, when
opportunity beckoned, Lincoln was "the best prepared to answer the
call." This multiple biography further provides valuable background
and insights into the contributions and talents of Seward, Chase, and
Bates. Lincoln may have been "the indispensable ingredient of the
Civil War," but these three men were invaluable to Lincoln and they
played key roles in keeping the nation intact. - Amazon.com
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Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words that Remade America
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Garry Wills |
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1992
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Wills combines semantics and political
analysis in this account of the most famous speech in U.S. history. He
puts Lincoln's words in their cultural and intellectual contexts,
establishing the contributions of New England Transcendentalism and the
Greek Revival to the structure and the substance of the address. He also
interprets the speech as revolutionary, since it's a speech, too for in it
Lincoln bypassed as is, seems that Wills, not Lincoln, is bypassing the
Constitution to justify civic equality and national union on the basis of
the Declaration of Independence. Wills's analysis of the matrix of
Lincoln's text is more convincing than his present-minded critique of
"original intent." Nevertheless, he makes a strong case for his
argument that the concept of "a single people dedicated to a
proposition" has been overwhelmingly accepted by successive
generations of Americans. - Publishers Weekly
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Lincoln at Cooper Union: The Speech That Made Abraham Lincoln President |
| Harold Holzer |
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| 2004 |
| Few people know more
about Abraham Lincoln than Holzer (editor of Lincoln the Writer;
Lincoln Seen and Heard; etc.). This fine new work focuses on a
widely known but little studied address that Lincoln delivered
early in 1860 in New York City, which Holzer believes made Lincoln
the Republican candidate and therefore president. While one has to
credit other political and historical factors, Holzer is probably
right. Surely no one will again overlook this masterful speech,
even if it never rose to the eloquence of the Gettysburg Address.
That's precisely one of Holzer's main arguments: that the speech
was intended as a learned, historically grounded, legally powerful
rebuttal to claims of Lincoln's great Democratic opponent, Stephen
Douglas, about the constitutionality of slavery's spread into the
territories. But how, Holzer asks, did a long speech hold its
audience at Cooper Union and then infuse tens, perhaps hundreds of
thousands of newspaper readers with enthusiasm for the man? The
answer lies in large part with the nature of American culture,
"a highly politicized one"in the 1860s. But as Holzer
also makes clear, Lincoln conceived of the speech as part of an
astute strategy to win his party's nomination. While his political
wizardry will surprise few readers, they'll learn again how it was
combined with intellectual power and a fierce determination to
clarify his moral convictions. It was on this visit to New York
that Matthew Brady shot his most celebrated portrait of Lincoln
(which appears on the book jacket). Holzer devotes a fascinating
chapter to this episode. - Publishers Weekly
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Blood on the Moon: The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln |
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| 2001 |
| "Hurrah! Old Abe
Lincoln has been assassinated!" wrote a South Carolina girl
in her diary in 1865, giving palpable voice to the intense
anti-Lincoln sentiments of the slaveholders and the South in
general. This well-argued, often exciting account of an organized
Confederate plot behind John Wilkes Booth's murder of the
president both finely synthesizes traditional Lincoln
assassination scholarship and proposes new proof and twists on
already acknowledged possibilities. Steers, an avocational
historian who has written several other books on Lincoln and the
assassination, has a sharp ear for historical discordance and a
novelist's eye for illuminating detail. Carefully filling in
background (from Booth's relationship to theater and politics to
the fascinating, complicated trial of co-conspirator Mary Surratt)
for the non-specialized reader, Steers gracefully disentangles a
clutter of characters, historical details and hypotheses to prove
his own conspiracy theory. Much of this material will be new to
the common reader a Confederate plot to use yellow fever as a form
of biological warfare against the North; the flight to the Vatican
of Mary Surratt's son in an effort to escape prosecution after the
assassination but Steers never loses his firm grip on his exciting
primary narrative. Although he inclines toward purple prose in his
more dramatic moments ("The deed was done. The tyrant was
killed. Abraham Lincoln could burn in hell. Sic semper tyrannis!"),
his theory is forthrightly and convincingly presented. Less a book
for professional historians than U.S. history buffs and Lincoln
diehards, this engaging expos‚ makes for provocative reading. - Publishers Weekly
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Moonlight: Abraham Lincoln and the Almanac Trial |
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| 2000 |
| In Mason Country,
Ill., in 1857, two young men, James Norris and William
"Duff" Armstrong, waylaid a drunken older man with a big
stick and a "slung-shot" (a form of blackjack). Days
later he died, and the pair was charged with murder: Norris was
swiftly convicted of manslaughter; Armstrong's trial was postponed
for a change of venue. On his deathbed, Armstrong's father, Jack,
committed his wife to secure the area's best lawyer for his son: a
close friend from Jack's youth named Abraham Lincoln. Thus was
Lincoln drawn into the biggest and strangest criminal trial of his
career. Already quite famous inside Illinois, Honest Abe had built
his courtroom reputation largely on civil practice, notably
avoiding criminal defendants he thought were guilty; this trial
was likely the major exception, and Walsh's painstaking dissection
of it tries to provide both a surprising look at Lincoln and a
brief piece of courtroom theater. The book largely succeeds as the
latter; witness by witness, argument by argument, independent
historian and biographer Walsh (Darkling I Listen: The Last Days
and Death of John Keats) shows how Lincoln won an unlikely
acquittal. One of his tactics was a masterful cross-examination.
Another amounted to witness tampering, and arguably to suborning
perjury. A key argument had to do with the time the moon set on
the night of the beating: here Lincoln used an almanac
(misleadingly) to discredit the prosecution's star witness.
Otherwise assiduous biographers and historians, Walsh maintains,
got nearly all the facts about the "almanac trial" at
least slightly wrong: Lincoln didn't (as was later charged) doctor
the almanac or use one from the wrong yearAhe didn't have to: his
masterful, "glib, insinuating," tactics alone succeeded
in getting his client cleared. Walsh ably shows how and why. - Publishers Weekly
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More on Lincoln...
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Behind Bayonets: The Civil War in Northern Ohio |
| David Van Tassel with
John Vacha |
| 2006 |
Eminent Cleveland
historian David Van Tassel had undertaken the challenge of writing
an illustrated history of the Cleveland homefront during the Civil
War. Unfortunately, he died in 2000 before completing his
manuscript. Historian John Vacha completed the final chapters
using notes, lists, and ideas that Van Tassel had gathered, and
their efforts are presented in Behind Bayonets.
Behind Bayonets focuses on Ohio’s
substantial role in the Civil War. It is perhaps the only work
that uses published and unpublished sources written by northeast
Ohioans to comment on the causes, course, and purpose of the war.
It does not provide an overview of battles, but it does address
soldiers’ enlistments and early camp experiences, women’s
experiences, public reactions to emancipation and the general
political interest in the war, local business growth during the
war, and Lincoln’s assassination and the funeral train’s stop
in Cleveland.
The authors use moving
first-person commentaries and accounts to illustrate and explain
these issues and situations. Additionally, the text is lavishly
illustrated with rare photographs from the Western Reserve
Historical Society’s archives. This regional perspective
on the war is a noteworthy addition to Civil War literature,
offering insight into what was going on at home while the war was
being fought. |
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The Great Republic: A History of America |
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1999 |
Drawn from uncollected speeches and
articles as well as from the author's four-volume History of the
English-Speaking Peoples, this anthology of the great statesman Winston
Churchill's writings on American history highlights both its author's
vigorous prose style and his commitment to the idea that the United
States and the United Kingdom shared not only a common past but a common
destiny.
As a young man, writes his namesake and
grandson in his introduction, Churchill toured some of the battlefields
of the Revolutionary and Civil Wars, and it is in writing of these two
epochs and the expansionist years between them that Churchill is
strongest. Of particular interest are his remarks on the ideological
origins of the colonial revolution in such documents as the Magna Carta
and the teachings of the Puritan elders, although, as an eminently
practical politician, Churchill gives attention to less lofty causes of
dissent--for instance, the English crown's logistical difficulty in
governing an overseas empire with ideas of governance and resources of
its own. Churchill's reflections on the Second World War are also of
much value, and he provides an insider's view of the defeat of Nazism
and the birth of the cold war. Devotees of Churchill's work will
not find much new here, but readers approaching him for the first time
will find this volume to be a fine introduction to Churchill's writing
and thought. -
Amazon.com |
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The Myth of the Lost Cause and Civil War History |
| Edited by: Gary W.
Gallagher and Alan T. Nolan |
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1999 |
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The South lost the Civil War, but
southerners have certainly held their own in the postwar battle to shape
historical interpretations of the conflict. Southern politicians, war
veterans, and historians successfully promoted the "Lost
Cause" view of the origins and results of our national nightmare.
The South, so the story goes, wanted to preserve its unique culture, and
slavery was not a fundamental basis of that culture. Led by valiant
gentlemen-officers (e.g., Robert E. Lee) and brave, defiant common
soldiers, the Confederacy struggled against insurmountable odds,
eventually succumbing to numerically but not morally superior forces.
This collection of essays by nine Civil War scholars shows how the myth
was consciously propagated by southerners, often in an attempt to
rationalize the physical and social carnage left by the war. These
essays are well reasoned and timely, given current controversies raging
over the display of the Confederate battle flag. This will be a valuable
addition to Civil War collections. - Booklist |
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Champion Hill: Decisive Battle for Vicksburg
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Timothy B. Smith
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2004
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The Battle of Champion Hill was the decisive
land engagement of the Vicksburg Campaign. The May 16, 1863, fighting took
place just 20 miles east of the river city, where the advance of Gen.
Ulysses S. Grant's Federal army attacked Gen. John C. Pemberton's hastily
gathered Confederates. The bloody fighting seesawed back and
forth until superior Union leadership broke apart the Southern line,
sending Pemberton's army into headlong retreat. The victory on
Mississippi's wooded hills sealed the fate of both Vicksburg and her large
field army, propelled Grant into the national spotlight, and earned him
the command of the entire U.S. armed forces. Timothy Smith, who holds a Ph.D. from
Mississippi State and works as a historian for the National Park Service,
has written the definitive account of this long overlooked battle. His
vivid prose is grounded upon years of primary research and is rich in
analysis, strategic and tactical action, and character development.
Champion Hill will become a classic Civil War battle study. -
Amazon.com
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Fields of Honor: Pivotal Battles of the Civil War
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Edwin C. Bearss
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| 2006
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Bearss presents the story of the Civil War
as he has in the battlefield tours he has conducted for many years. A
former chief historian of the National Parks Service, he chronicles 14
crucial battles, including Fort Sumter, Shiloh, Antietam, Gettysburg,
Vicksburg, Chattanooga, Sherman's march through the Carolinas, and
Appomattox, the battles ranging between 1861 and 1865; included is an
introductory chapter describing John Brown's raid in October 1859. Bearss
relates the details of terrain and tactics and of personalities and
command decisions; he personalizes generals and politicians, sergeants and
privates. The text is augmented by 80 black-and-white photographs and 19
maps. A chance to tour battlefields without leaving home. - Booklist
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Lee's Lieutenants: A Study in Command
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Douglas Southall Freeman
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| 1942 - 1944
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"Lee's Lieutenants: A Study in
Command" is the most colorful and popular of Douglas Southall
Freeman's works. A sweeping narrative that presents a multiple biography
against the flame-shot background of the American Civil War, it is the
story of the great figures of the Army of Northern Virginia who fought
under Robert E. Lee. Dr. Freeman describes the early rise and
fall of General Beauregard, the developing friction between Jefferson
Davis and Joseph E. Johnston, the emergence and failure of a number of
military charlatans, and the triumphs of unlikely men at crucial times. He
also describes the rise of the legendary "Stonewall" Jackson and
traces his progress in the Shenandoah Valley Campaign and into Richmond
amid the acclaim of the South. The Confederacy won resounding victories
throughout the war, but seldom easily or without tremendous casualties.
Death was always on the heels of fame, but the men who survived — among
them Jackson, Longstreet, and Ewell — developed as commanders and men.
"Lee's Lieutenants" follows these men to the costly battle at
Gettysburg, through the deepening twilight of the South's declining
military might, and finally to the collapse of Lee's command and his
formal surrender in 1865. To his unparalleled descriptions of men and
operations, Dr. Freeman adds an insightful analysis of the lessons learned
and their bearing upon the future military development of the nation.
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War, Technology, and Experience aboard the USS Monitor
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David A. Mindell
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| 2000
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In a familiar story, the USS Monitor battled
the CSS Virginia (the armored and refitted USS Merrimack) at Hampton Roads
in March of 1862. In War, Technology, and Experience aboard the USS
Monitor, David A. Mindell adds a new perspective to the story as he
explores how mariners--fighting "blindly" below the
waterline--lived and coped with the metal monster they called the
"iron coffin." Mindell shows how the iron warship emerged as an
idea and became practicable, how building it drew upon and forced changes
in contemporary manufacturing technology, and how the vessel captured the
nineteenth-century American popular and literary imaginations.
Combining technical, personal, administrative, and literary analysis,
Mindell examines the experience of the men aboard the Monitor and their
reactions to the thrills and dangers that accompanied the new machine. The
invention surrounded men with iron and threatened their heroism, their
self-image as warriors, even their lives. Mindell also examines responses
to this strange new warship by Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville,
who prophetically saw in the Civil War a portent of the mechanized warfare
of the future. The story of the Monitor shows how technology changes not
only the tools but also the very experience of combat, generating effects
that are still felt today in the era of "smart bombs" and
pushbutton wars.
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The Bloody Crucible of Courage:
Fighting Methods and Combat Experience of the Civil War |
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Brent Nosworthy |
| 2005 |
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This massive study of Civil War weaponry,
tactics and combat practices covers so much so well that it's
indispensable; it's also so densely written that even series students of
the conflict may find it slow going. The author, a distinguished
independent scholar, has written similar studies of the 18th century's
wars (The Anatomy of Victory) and Napoleonic ground combat (With Musket,
Sword and Cannon), and here, as in those books, is politely revisionist.
Civil War generals were not ignoramuses who mindlessly pitted mass
infantry formations against rifled muskets, but men who had studied the
revolution in both tactics and weaponry in more detail than is usually
allowed in conventional Civil War historiography, of which the author has
no high opinion. (It also neglects the prewar roots of the ironclad ship,
which Nosworthy does not.)
The need for a revolution had not been
proven in 1861, and the outstanding merit of the book is the way it pulls
into a single narrative how that revolution was completed-or in some cases
not completed. Competent officers soon learned that the rifle was potent
but not invincible, until it became a repeater (which it should have been
in the Union Army by 1863) and the riflemen were snug behind field
fortifications, supported by rifled artillery. But the smoothbore Napoleon
(for Napoleon III, be it noted) saw out the war because of its greater
mobility, and the much derided bayonet retained a psychological impact and
the cavalry saber a physical one, both at close quarters. With its
first-hand accounts, diagrams and all-in-all exhaustive coverage, this
volume is an exceptional reference. - Publishers Weekly
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Other military and battle histories...
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The Killer Angels
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| Michael Shaara
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| 1974
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| The late Shaara's Pulitzer Prize-winning
novel (1974) concerns the battle of Gettysburg and was the basis for the
1993 film Gettysburg. The events immediately before and during the battle
are seen through the eyes of Confederate Generals Lee, Longstreet, and
Armistead and Federal General Buford, Colonel Joshua L. Chamberlain, and a
host of others. The author's ability to convey the thoughts of men in war
as well as their confusion-the so-called "fog of battle"-is
outstanding. - Library Journal
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The March: A Novel
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E.L. Doctorow
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| 2005
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| Sherman's march through Georgia and the
Carolinas produced hundreds of thousands of deaths and untold collateral
damage. In this powerful novel, Doctorow gets deep inside the pillage,
cruelty and destruction—as well as the care and burgeoning love that
sprung up in their wake. William Tecumseh Sherman ("Uncle Billy"
to his troops) is depicted as a man of complex moods and varying
abilities, whose need for glory sometimes obscures his military acumen.
Most of the many characters are equally well-drawn and psychologically
deep, but the two most engaging are Pearl, a plantation owner's despised
daughter who is passing as a drummer boy, and Arly, a cocksure Reb soldier
whose belief that God dictates the events in his life is combined with the
cunning of a wily opportunist. Their lives provide irony, humor and
strange coincidences. Though his lyrical prose sometimes shades into
sentimentality when it strays from what people are feeling or saying,
Doctorow's gift for getting into the heads of a remarkable variety of
characters, famous or ordinary, make this a kind of grim Civil War
Canterbury Tales. On reaching the novel's last pages, the reader feels
wonder that this nation was ever able to heal after so brutal, and
personal, a conflict. - Publishers Weekly
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Lincoln: A Novel
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Gore Vidal
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| 1984
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| Lincoln is a masterwork of
historical fiction, in which Gore Vidal combines a comprehensive
knowledge of Civil War America with 20th-century literary
technique, probing the minds and motives of the men surrounding
Abraham Lincoln, including personal secretary John Hay and
scheming cabinet members William Seward and Salmon P. Chase, as
well as his wife, Mary Todd. It is a book monumental in scope that
never loses sight of the intimate and personal in its depiction of
the power struggles that accompanied Lincoln's efforts to preserve
the Union at all costs--efforts in which the eradication of
slavery was far from the president's main objective. As usual,
there's plenty of room for Vidal's wickedly humorous deflation of
American icons, including a comic interlude in a Washington
bordello in which Lincoln's former law partner informs Hay that
Lincoln had contracted syphilis as a young man and had, just
before marrying Mary Todd, suffered what can only be described as
a nervous breakdown. (Protestors should note that Vidal is only
passing along what that former partner had written in his own
biography of Lincoln.) Don't be intimidated by the size of
Lincoln; if you like historical fiction, you should read this book
at the first opportunity. -
Amazon.com
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More Civil War fiction...
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Indicates a
past presenter to the Cleveland Civil War Roundtable |
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