Question of the Week: 7/11-7/17/22

It’s been a while since we’ve looked at the book stacks…

What Civil War books are you reading this summer?



31 Responses to Question of the Week: 7/11-7/17/22

  1. Inspired by Chris Heisey’s recent “Monocacy” report I tracked down a copy of Glenn Worthington’s “Fighting for Time: the Battle that Saved Washington” at HathiTrust…

  2. I am currently reading two Civil War related books: Lee’s Lieutenants by Douglas Southall Freeman and The Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin.

  3. Summer reading has been busy. I’ve read From Arlington to Appomattox: Robert E. Lee’s Civil War Day by Day by Charles R. Knight, Lincoln’s Informer; Charles A. Dana and the Inside Story of the Union Army by Carl J. Guarneri, Bull Run to Bull Run or Four Years in the Army of Northern Virginia by George Baylor, Robert E. Lee by Allen C. Guelzo and currently reading Braxton Bragg: The Most Hated Man of the Confederacy by Earl J. Hess.

  4. I’m reading three things related to family history and various projects I’m working on:

    – Margaret Hobson’s detailed history of the 44th Indiana

    – Nothing But Victory by Woodworth

    – Borderland Knight by Stickles

  5. I have a few reading assignments. I am starting a project of reading books by authors who also participate here on Emerging Civil War.

    1. The Liberation of Pointe du Hoc, by JoAnna McDonald. This book is said to be the best book on the Rangers and how they secured this vital position.

    2. Lee Invades the North: A Comparison of the Antietam and Gettysburg Campaigns by Bradley Gottfried.

    3.A study of Military Geography. I am using the curriculum of the West Point course on Military Geography, offered to seniors at the Military Academy. Many books and a few articles.

  6. William Marvel: Lee’s Last Retreat; The Flight to Appomattox

    M. Chris Bryan: Cedar Mountain to Antietam; A Civil War Campaign History of the Union XII Corps, July-September 1862

    Steven R. Stotelmyer: Too Useful to Sacrifice; Reconsidering George B. McClellan’s Generalship in the Maryland Campaign from South Mountain to Antietam

    Chris Mackowski and Dan Welch, Ed’s., The Summer of ‘63; Gettysburg; Favorite Stories and Fresh Perspectives from the Historians at Emerging Civil War

    Larry J. Daniel, Cannoneers in Gray: The Field Artillery of the Army of Tennessee (Revised Edition)

    Ron Chernow: Grant (Unabridged Audiobook)

    Charles R. Knight, From Arlington to Appomattox: Robert E. Lee’s Civil War Day by Day 1861-1865

    Currently reading: Kenneth W. Noe, The Howling Storm: Weather, Climate, and the American Civil War.

  7. Lee Invades the North: A Comparison of the Antietam and Gettysburg Campaigns

    Defending the Arteries of Rebellion: Confederate Naval Operations in the Mississippi River Valley, 1861-1865

  8. Read David Blight’s Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom; Jeffrey W. Hunt: Meade and Lee After Gettysburg July 14-31; Allen Guelzo’s Robert E. Lee: A Life. Reading; Elizabeth Leonard’s Benjamin F. Butler: A Noisy Fearless Life.

  9. Mastering America by Robert Bonner; The Lost Indictment of Robert E. Lee by John Reeves; The Howling Storm by Kenneth Noe; Day by Day Through the Civil War in Georgia by Michael Shaffer; 37th Virginia Infantry by Thomas Rankin

  10. James Longstreet and the American Civil War followed by The Great What If’s of the American Civil War. Just finished rereading Hess’s Pickets Charge.

  11. Not a Civil War book but I have been reading Willa Cather’s O Pioneers! for the first time; and am working on Choctaw Confederates for an ECW review!

  12. Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy
    Soldiers at the Doorstep Civil War Lore
    Dear Old Ellwood
    The Dark Close Wood The Wilderness

  13. Longstrret at Gettysburg: A Critical Reassessment by Cory M Pfarr
    Robert E. Lee: A Life by Allen C. Guelzo
    Robert E. Lee and Me: A Southerner’s Reckoning with the Myth of the Lost Cause by Ty Seidule

  14. Next up for me are The Birth of Colorado: A Civil War Perspective by Duane Smith, and A Confederate in the Colorado Gold Fields by Daniel Conner.

    (I’ll give you three guesses which state I live in…)

  15. rereading the Catton trilogies on the Army of the Potomac and his Centennial History of the Civil War … his three volumes on U.S. Grant are also good reads.

  16. The Union Cavalry Comes of Age: Hartwood Church to Brandy Station, 1863 by Eric J Wittenberg

  17. The Great Partnership, Christian Keller.
    Chancellorsville, Stephen Sears.
    Chancellorsville’s Forgotten Front, Chris Mackowski and Kris White.

  18. Confederate Conscription and the Struggle for Southern Soldiers by John M. Sacher. Must read for everyone. About finished with it.

    Re-reading Tim Smith’s Siege of Vicksburg books more carefully now after visiting Vicksburg this past month. His mention of Mississippi militia Lt. Colonel Edward Fontaine led me to an internet search about him and the state of Mississippi and Vicksburg NMP have some of his letters from 1861 and 1862 transcribed. Read those too.

  19. With a number of other reads, I’m trying to make this the summer of soldiers’ letter collections. Currently reading Irby Scott’s collection (12th GA) edited by Johnnie Pearson, UT Press, 2010.

  20. Finished Pulitzer Prize finalist The Three Cornered War by Megan Kate Nelson. Currently reading Fitzgerald Ross’s Cities and Camps of the Confederate States

  21. also just finished the informative To The Manner Born: A Life of General William H. T. Walker – who wouldn’t want to spend time with “Old Shotpouch”, whose gg-granddaughter lives down the street from me?

  22. Hymns of the Republic by Gwynne, Robert E. Lee: A Life by Guelzo, Ends of War by Janney, and Grant vs. Lee

  23. Some new ones: “Confederate Tide Rising: Robert E. Lee and the Making of Southern Strategy, 1861-62,” “Caught in the Maelstrom: The Indian Nations in the Civil War,” and an old favorite,”The Life of Billy Yank.” Johnny Reb was a great read. Just finished “Lincoln Takes Command: The Campaign to Take Norfolk and the Destruction of the CSS Virginia” enlarged the story of the ironclads development and threat, and is highly recommended.

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