tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16471073Thu, 15 Oct 2026 09:05:20 +0000BooknotesBook ReviewsBook NewsReviews - Campaigns and BattlesReviews - Theater - WestReviews - Theater - Trans MississippiReviews - Theater - EastReference Books/Research MaterialsReviews - Civil War SocietyReviews - BiographyReviews - Unit HistoriesReviews - NavalReviews - PoliticsComing SoonBook SnapshotsReviews - Diaries/ Letters/ MemoirsAuthorsReading ListsReviews - Guides and Map StudiesPublishersReviews - Indian ConflictsReviews - Theater - Far WestInterviewsReviews - Essay CollectionMagazines and JournalsReviews - Civil War EconomyFive books on ... seriesReviews - CW MedicineSnapshots from the CollectionTexas Revolution / U.S. - Mexican WarReviews - Photographic StudiesReviews - Archaeology/Material CultureReviews - Environmental HistoryNon-fiction American Civil War book reviews, commentary, industry news, interviews, reading lists, and profiles of upcoming releases.https://cwba.blogspot.com/noreply@blogger.com (DW@CWBA)Blogger3980125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16471073.post-182808260703244898Wed, 14 Oct 2026 17:01:17 +00002026-10-14T10:01:17.191-07:00BooknotesNew Arrival: • The Atlanta Campaign, Volume 3: From the Chattahoochee to Peach Tree Creek, June 28 to July 20, 1864 by David A. Powell (Savas Beatie, 2026). Beginning in 2024, publisher Savas Beatie has been releasing installments of David Powell's planned five-volume 1864 Atlanta Campaign series once per year. The latest is The Atlanta Campaign, Volume 3: From the Chattahoochee to Peach Tree https://cwba.blogspot.com/2026/10/booknotes-atlanta-campaign-volume-3.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (DW@CWBA)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16471073.post-6912872605336857856Mon, 12 Oct 2026 17:12:54 +00002026-10-12T10:12:54.274-07:00Book Reviews[Grant & Meade: An Uneasy Alliance by Bradley M. Gottfried and Linda I. Gottfried (Seminole Press, 2026). Softcover, maps, photos, illustrations, appendix, endnotes, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:170/203. ISBN:979-8-234-03694-0. $19.95] When Ulysses S. Grant was promoted to lieutenant general and appointed U.S. Army general-in-chief, George Gordon Meade's position as Army of the https://cwba.blogspot.com/2026/10/review-grant-meade-uneasy-alliance-by.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (DW@CWBA)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16471073.post-4583999379748599528Thu, 08 Oct 2026 15:47:27 +00002026-10-09T18:57:06.336-07:00BooknotesNew Arrival: • Treason and Traitors in Texas: Facilitators of the American Civil War by Randolph W. Farmer (Histria Academic, 2026). By their very nature, the size of secret societies and their influence upon history will always be sources of debate and conjecture. The Knights of the Golden Circle was one of the most prominent of such groups that operated during the Civil War era, and it has https://cwba.blogspot.com/2026/10/booknotes-treason-and-traitors-in-texas.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (DW@CWBA)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16471073.post-2637565067172493141Tue, 06 Oct 2026 17:23:39 +00002026-10-06T10:23:39.274-07:00Book ReviewsReviews - CW MedicineReviews - Environmental History[Civil War Camps and Soldier Health: Sanitation and Military Effectiveness in the Union Army by Earl J. Hess (Kent State University Press, 2026). Softcover, photos, tables, illustrations, endnotes, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:279/335. ISBN:978-1-60635-505-3. $39.95] History has left us with the general impression that Civil War camps were decidedly unsanitary places that caused untold https://cwba.blogspot.com/2026/10/review-civil-war-camps-and-soldier.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (DW@CWBA)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16471073.post-3196934899424475168Mon, 05 Oct 2026 14:42:42 +00002026-10-05T07:42:42.251-07:00BooknotesNew Arrival: • Texas Cotton and Confederate Finance: Blockade Runners, Border Merchants, and Government Agents by L. Tuffly Ellis & Richard B. McCaslin (UNT Press, 2026). With conventional means of exporting Texas cotton gradually cut off by the naval blockade, trade with neutral Mexico assumed vital proportions. Although corruption and political instability south of the border made such https://cwba.blogspot.com/2026/10/booknotes-texas-cotton-and-confederate.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (DW@CWBA)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16471073.post-9046533003635851033Fri, 02 Oct 2026 13:38:03 +00002026-10-02T20:53:58.292-07:00AuthorsInterviewsThe site's long-running Q&A feature ends its rather long hiatus with the return of Theodore Savas. Ted wore his publisher's hat for our 2007 interview, but today we will be talking about his newest work on the authorial side of things: The Indispensable Man: George Washington Rains, the Confederate Powder Works, and the Civil War You Never Knew. CWBA: Welcome back, Ted. It has often been https://cwba.blogspot.com/2026/10/author-q-theodore-savas-and.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (DW@CWBA)61tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16471073.post-1267306566783940444Wed, 30 Sep 2026 15:53:36 +00002026-09-30T08:53:36.490-07:00BooknotesNew Arrival: • Texas and the Civil War: New Perspectives by Carl H. Moneyhon (UNT Press, 2026). This looks like a new survey history of Civil War Texas, a major goal of which is to center the most recent scholarship and highlight the most prominent current trends in research and writing. Carl Moneyhon's Texas and the Civil War: New Perspectives also pushes back against the popular notion that https://cwba.blogspot.com/2026/09/booknotes-texas-and-civil-war.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (DW@CWBA)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16471073.post-991171787002698451Mon, 28 Sep 2026 16:14:51 +00002026-09-28T09:14:51.323-07:00BooknotesNew Arrival: • John M. Schofield: Soldier–Statesman of the Civil War and Gilded Age by Robert Wooster (OU Press, 2026). Perhaps more than any other Union Army department-level command, the one involving oversight of Missouri required a general with political skills to match his military ones. In addition to trying to suppress a widespread regional guerrilla insurgency, the department commander https://cwba.blogspot.com/2026/09/booknotes-john-m-schofield.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (DW@CWBA)2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16471073.post-4284955485547823398Thu, 24 Sep 2026 15:42:42 +00002026-09-24T08:42:42.756-07:00Coming Soon Scheduled for OCT 20261: • Managing the Union Army: Scott, McClellan, Halleck, and Grant as General-in-Chief by Earl Hess. • General George B. McClellan: A Study in Controversy by Maurice Daoust. • Confederate Gibraltar: The Vicksburg Campaign from the Fall of New Orleans through the Battles in the Bayou by Matt Atkinson. • From Blood to Ink: How the Press Covered the Gettysburg Campaign by https://cwba.blogspot.com/2026/09/coming-soon-october-26-edition.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (DW@CWBA)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16471073.post-7625096153070024224Wed, 23 Sep 2026 16:22:17 +00002026-09-23T09:22:17.818-07:00BooknotesNew Arrival: • Occupied Alexandria: How the Civil War Transformed a Southern City by Madeline Feierstein (Arcadia Pub and The Hist Press, 2026). Stretched along the right bank of the Potomac River directly across from Washington, D.C., the city of Alexandria, Virginia had zero chance of escaping Union occupation. Indeed, once Virginia seceded the town was instantly seized by eager U.S. https://cwba.blogspot.com/2026/09/booknotes-occupied-alexandria.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (DW@CWBA)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16471073.post-4465797137245921664Tue, 22 Sep 2026 16:23:00 +00002026-09-22T09:23:00.769-07:00BooknotesNew Arrival: • A Glorious Fate: The Life and Legacy of Colonel Robert Gould Shaw by Kevin M. Levin (UNC Press, 2026). From the description: "Robert Gould Shaw (1837–1863) is best known as the heroic colonel who led the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment—one of the first regiments of Black soldiers in the Civil War—in its famous ill-fated charge against Confederate Fort Wagner on July 18, 1863https://cwba.blogspot.com/2026/09/booknotes-glorious-fate.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (DW@CWBA)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16471073.post-1882843417713305289Mon, 21 Sep 2026 15:14:27 +00002026-09-21T08:14:27.773-07:00BooknotesNew Arrival: • Civil War Chaos in Texas: The Tumultuous Tenure of Governor Pendleton Murrah by Lori Duran (Arcadia Pub and The Hist Press, 2026). After Unionist Texas governor Sam Houston was removed from office in 1861, he was followed by Confederate governors Edward Clark, Francis Lubbock, and Pendleton Murrah. Murrah's involvement in the politics and strife of the period is the main subject https://cwba.blogspot.com/2026/09/booknotes-civil-war-chaos-in-texas.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (DW@CWBA)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16471073.post-8077991364291741196Fri, 18 Sep 2026 15:30:39 +00002026-09-18T08:30:39.621-07:00Book ReviewsReviews - Diaries/ Letters/ MemoirsReviews - Indian ConflictsReviews - Theater - Far West["When All Our Troubles Will Be Forgotten": The Civil War Letters and Recollections of Captain George Henry Pettis edited by Jerry D. Thompson (University of New Mexico Press, 2026). Hardcover, 5 maps, photos, illustrations, endnotes, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:vii,194/336. ISBN:978-0-8263-6983-3. $34.95] By his own estimate, Union Army captain George H. Pettis (First California https://cwba.blogspot.com/2026/09/review-when-all-our-troubles-will-be.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (DW@CWBA)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16471073.post-4306079079066503772Wed, 16 Sep 2026 15:58:11 +00002026-09-16T08:58:11.776-07:00BooknotesNew Arrival: • The 54th Pennsylvania Infantry in the Civil War by Christopher A. Baran (McFarland, 2026). It's understandable that publication of Union regimental histories of units that served in the eastern theater is still heavily weighted towards those attached to the Army of the Potomac for most of the war. At the same time, eastern regiments that didn't fit that mold are still fairly wellhttps://cwba.blogspot.com/2026/09/booknotes-54th-pennsylvania-infantry-in.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (DW@CWBA)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16471073.post-4827508508917644005Tue, 15 Sep 2026 15:23:33 +00002026-09-15T08:23:33.792-07:00BooknotesNew Arrival: • And Rest Under The Shade Of The Trees: Essays In Honor of James I. Robertson, Jr. edited by Steven E. Woodworth, Christopher L. Jones, and Christopher J. Smith (Laurel Hill Pub, 2026). Eminent Civil War historian James Irvin "Bud" Robertson Jr. passed away in 2019 at the age of 89. If you're around my age and serious interest in the ACW blossomed during the late-80s and https://cwba.blogspot.com/2026/09/booknotes-and-rest-under-shade-of-trees.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (DW@CWBA)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16471073.post-4085643464080918299Mon, 14 Sep 2026 16:59:32 +00002026-09-14T09:59:32.026-07:00BooknotesNew Arrival: • The Civil War in Hampton Roads and the Outer Banks by Matthew Ericson (Arcadia Pub & The Hist Press, 2026). Over their prolific (and, for the latter, ongoing) runs, The History Press's Civil War Sesquicentennial Series and Civil War Series published a number of titles covering various military events in southeastern Virginia and coastal North Carolina during 1861-62. Matthew https://cwba.blogspot.com/2026/09/booknotes-civil-war-in-hampton-roads.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (DW@CWBA)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16471073.post-8823106115404206753Thu, 10 Sep 2026 15:28:59 +00002026-09-10T08:28:59.443-07:00BooknotesNew Arrival: • A Michigan Cavalryman: The Life and Untimely Death of Major Noah Henry Ferry, Fifth Michigan Cavalry by Eric J. Wittenberg (Fox Run Pub, 2026). One of the publishers that the late Eric Wittenberg developed a close relationship with over his prolific writing career was Keith Jones's Fox Run Publishing. As indicated in this press release from back in late March of this year, Eric https://cwba.blogspot.com/2026/09/booknotes-michigan-cavalryman.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (DW@CWBA)10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16471073.post-7976747712353294179Tue, 08 Sep 2026 17:58:57 +00002026-09-08T10:58:57.925-07:00Book ReviewsReviews - Campaigns and BattlesReviews - NavalReviews - Theater - West[Ironclad Ambush: Confederates Strike Lincoln's Mississippi River Blockade at the Head of Passes, October 12, 1861 by Neil P. Chatelain (Savas Beatie, 2026). Hardcover, 12 maps, photos, illustrations, footnotes, appendix, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:xviii,209/255. ISBN:978-1-61121-795-7. $32.95] As Civil War naval historian Neil Chatelain revealed in his excellent 2020 study Defending https://cwba.blogspot.com/2026/09/review-ironclad-ambush-confederates.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (DW@CWBA)2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16471073.post-4076742694119598640Thu, 03 Sep 2026 16:26:34 +00002026-09-03T09:26:34.105-07:00BooknotesNew Arrival: • "Now I'm With the Invalids": The Veteran Reserve Corps in America’s Civil War by David A. Welker (Casemate, 2026). Returning combat disabled soldiers to the army fulfilled an acute need for the government and recovered wounded alike. The U.S. military, facing ever increasing manpower pressures as the war progressed, searched far and wide for volunteers to fill needed roles of allhttps://cwba.blogspot.com/2026/09/booknotes-now-im-with-invalids.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (DW@CWBA)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16471073.post-2861682551472083854Wed, 02 Sep 2026 20:12:32 +00002026-09-02T13:12:32.937-07:00BooknotesNew Arrival: • The Second Day at Gettysburg, July 2, 1863 by Britt C. Isenberg (Casemate, 2026). From the description: "The second day at Gettysburg has defined what most Americans know today about 1863’s most pivotal campaign in the Civil War’s eastern theater. Two veteran armies in transition clashed desperately, in the process immortalizing sites such as Devil’s Den, the Slaughter Pen, https://cwba.blogspot.com/2026/09/booknotes-second-day-at-gettysburg-july.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (DW@CWBA)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16471073.post-2944995896440513047Sat, 29 Aug 2026 20:41:03 +00002026-08-29T13:41:03.787-07:00BooknotesNew Arrival: • Grant & Meade: An Uneasy Alliance by Bradley M. Gottfried & Linda I. Gottfried (Seminole Pr, 2026). When U.S. Grant was brought to Washington by President Lincoln to head the entire Union war effort as general-in-chief, Army of the Potomac commander George Meade assumed, as did many others, that Grant would appoint a trusted and familiar western general in his place. When Grant https://cwba.blogspot.com/2026/08/booknotes-grant-meade.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (DW@CWBA)2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16471073.post-1450899302586014573Fri, 28 Aug 2026 16:40:20 +00002026-08-28T09:43:39.081-07:00Book NewsPosting yesterday's review of Brian Burton's Forward to Richmond: The Virginia Campaign of 1862 made me wonder yet again whether we'll ever get a treatment of the Peninsula Campaign on the order of Gordon Rhea's Overland series or David Powell's multi-volume Chickamauga and Atlanta projects. Thematically similar to Burton's single-volume overview, but fleshed out over multiple books, is Ethan's https://cwba.blogspot.com/2026/08/more-on-1862-war-in-virginia-through.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (DW@CWBA)2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16471073.post-4721946309587214990Thu, 27 Aug 2026 17:11:53 +00002026-08-27T10:11:53.376-07:00Book ReviewsReviews - Campaigns and BattlesReviews - Theater - East[Forward to Richmond: The Virginia Campaign of 1862 by Brian K. Burton (University of Nebraska Press, 2026). Hardcover, 17 maps, illustrations, endnotes, bibliographic essay, index. Pages main/total:xiv,259/335. ISBN:978-1-4962-2971-7. $39.95] Brian Burton's Forward to Richmond: The Virginia Campaign of 1862 is the twelfth installment in University of Nebraska Press's Great Campaigns of the https://cwba.blogspot.com/2026/08/review-forward-to-richmond-virginia.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (DW@CWBA)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16471073.post-6113330823454956222Mon, 24 Aug 2026 14:16:34 +00002026-08-24T07:16:34.893-07:00Coming Soon Scheduled for SEPT 20261: • "When All Our Troubles Will Be Forgotten": The Civil War Letters and Recollections of Captain George Henry Pettis ed. by Jerry Thompson. • John M. Schofield: Soldier–Statesman of the Civil War and Gilded Age by Robert Wooster. • "Now I'm With the Invalids": The Veteran Reserve Corps in America’s Civil War by David Welker. • Texas and the Civil War: New Perspectiveshttps://cwba.blogspot.com/2026/08/coming-soon-september-26-edition.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (DW@CWBA)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16471073.post-806916812941267713Thu, 20 Aug 2026 15:13:09 +00002026-08-20T08:13:09.443-07:00BooknotesNew Arrival: • "When All Our Troubles Will Be Forgotten": The Civil War Letters and Recollections of Captain George Henry Pettis edited by Jerry D. Thompson (UNM Press, 2026). University of New Mexico Press doesn't publish Civil War-related books very often, but when they do the release is always worthy of close attention. The essential library of the Civil War in the Desert Southwest contains https://cwba.blogspot.com/2026/08/booknotes-when-all-our-troubles-will-be.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (DW@CWBA)0