This was an interesting find today during some Google Book browsing. The Romance of the Civil War was published in 1903 and edited by Albert Bushnell Hart and Elizabeth Stevens. However, the title is a bit misleading. When I first found it I expected the “romantic” nature of late 19th century writing to bring forth an expected confined and yet allusive narrative that would live up to the title. Well,…

Bruce Nichols. Guerrilla Warfare in Civil War Missouri, Volume 2, 1863. Jefferson: McFarland, 2007. 389 pp. $25.00, ISBN 978-0-7864-2733-8. Bruce Nichols is a defense analyst and Civil War Missouri historian and this is his second book on “Guerrilla Warfare in Civil War Missouri,” his first was released by McFarland in 2004. Combine the first two volumes (a third is coming) and they thus far offer a thorough study of all…

Gettysburg: The Last Invasion by Allen C. Guelzo. Alfred A. Knopf, 2013. Cloth, ISBN: 0307594084. $35.00. I am not a big “battle study” book guy; I have maybe a shelf and a half dedicated to this genre of historiography. It’s not because it is beneath me, but because they are above me. I am not a military historian on that level. I know the general movements of important divisions and…

The 14th Brooklyn Regiment in the Civil War A History and Roster BY: Frank Callenda Regimental histories written today are a labor of love. A thankless task and one that does not pay well — you will never recoup the worth of time and money spent in monetary terms. But once again, that is not why we write them. With that said, Callenda clearly wrote about a group of men…

Milliken’s Bend: A Civil War Battle in History and Memory by Linda Barnickel Hardcover, 320 pages Linda Barnickel is described as “an archivist and freelance writer with master’s degrees from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and The Ohio State University.” Though not possessing a PhD, Barnickel is truly a historian and proves as much with her fine book, Milliken’s Bend: A Civil War Battle in History and Memory. Her work has…

1863: Lincoln’s Pivotal Year Harold Holzer (Editor) Sara Vaughn Gabbard (Editor) Contributors: Michael B. Ballard, Orville Vernon Burton, Catherine Clinton, William C. Davis, John F. Marszalek, Edna Greene Medford, Barnet Schechter, Craig L. Symonds, Frank J. Williams, Bob Zeller 216 pages, 6 x 9, 28 Illus., Hardcover SIU Press presents a nicely constructed portrait of the year 1863 with regard to Lincoln’s presidency and the nation. The book consists of…

Soldiering in the Army of Northern Virginia: A Statistical Portrait of the Troops Who Served Under Robert E. Lee by Joseph T. Glatthaar. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011. ISBN: 0807834920. $50.00. Glatthaar tells us in the Preface to Soldiering in the Army of Northern Virginia that he believes that “Civil War scholarship that focuses on soldiers is stuck.” Continuing he states that as historians we have focused…

This book reveals W. Henry Oettiker a young Wisconsin farmer who left the wheat fields of the Wisconsin frontier and traveled 10,000 miles all through his Civil War journey. The diary takes up Oettiker’s experiences during the last stages of the Civil War to his enlistment and service on the Great Plains and western frontier. From 1865 to 1866 Oettiker traveled another 2,000 miles west; a journey that was full…

Unfortunately, the spiritual world of the Civil War soldier with regard to his religious beliefs has not often been the focus of historians. This is for various reasons and unfortunately many of them political; which I will not get into. But for a few exceptions before 2001 [Charles Reagan Wilson's Baptized in Blood (1980); Randall Miller, Harry Stout, and Wilson's Religion and the American Civil War (1998); for example] few modern…