2023 Year in Review: Book Reviews

After accepting the book review editor role here at Emerging Civil War in March, I set a personal goal of increasing the number of book reviews that we offer our readers. After all, most of us history enthusiasts consume our passion subject largely through reading books, so what better way to make ECW readers aware of some of what is available than by publishing more reviews.

This year we published 70 book reviews! Obviously, that is over one book review a week on average. Some thanks are in order.

First, I would like to thank the publishers for kindly responding to my requests for books. While publishers certainly want help getting their books noticed by readers, they do expend time, effort, and expense in doing so.

A big thank you also goes to our many reviewers who contributed reviews this year. While they receive the book they review as compensation for their efforts, make no mistake about it, there is work in writing a review. Thank you!

I also appreciate the thousands of ECW readers. We at ECW sincerely hope you find our reviews beneficial to your life-long learning process.

Below is a list of the more-than 70 book reviews ECW published in 2023. Also included are the names of the authors and editors, as well the ECW reviewers’ names. Each title also links to the published review. Enjoy reading!

 

A Constant Reminder To All: Stonewall Jackson, the Lost Cause, and the Making of a West Virginia Idol by Steven Cody Straley. Reviewed by Stephen Davis.

Thirteen Months in Dixie, or, The Adventures of a Federal Prisoner in Texas by W.F. Oscar Federhen, edited by Jeaninne Surette Honstein & Steven A. Knowlton. Reviewed by Phill Greenwalt.

Irish American Civil War Songs: Identity, Loyalty, and Nationhood by Catherine V. Bateson. Reviewed by Meg Groeling.

North Carolina’s Confederate Hospitals, 1861-1863, Volume 1 by Wade Sokolosky. Reviewed by Sheritta Bitikofer.

Lady Rebels of Civil War Missouri by Larry Wood. Reviewed by Meg Groeling.

Decisions of the Maryland Campaign by Michael S. Lang. Reviewed by John Michael Priest.

Gettysburg’s Southern Front: Opportunity and Failure at Richmond by Hampton Newsome. Reviewed by Bert Dunkerly.

Contemners and Serpents: The James Wilson Family Civil War Correspondence, edited by Theodore Albert Fuller and Thomas Daniel Knight. Reviewed by Meg Groeling.

A Place of Rest for Our Gallant Boys: The U.S. General Hospital at Gallipolis, Ohio, 1861-1865 by Christy Perry Tuohey. Reviewed by Jon Tracey.

Spectacle of Grief: Public Funerals and Memory in the Civil War Era by Sarah J. Purcell. Reviewed by Derek D. Maxfield.

Bulldozed and Betrayed: Louisiana and the Stolen Elections of 1876 by Adam Fairclough. Reviewed by Sean Michael Chick.

The Confederate Military Forces in the Trans-Mississippi West, 1861-1865: A Study in Command by William Rosyton Geise. Reviewed by Patrick Kelley-Fischer.

Unceasing Fury: Texans at the Battle of Chickamauga, September 18-20, 1863 by Scott L. Mingus Sr. and Joseph L. Owen. Reviewed by Sean Michael Chick.

Of Age: Boy Soldiers and Military Power in the Civil War Era by Frances M. Clarke and Rebecca Jo Plant. Reviewed by Tim Talbott.

The Wild Woman of Cincinnati: Gender and Politics On the Eve of the Civil War by Michael D. Pierson. Reviewed by Meg Groeling.

Civil War Field Artillery: Promise and Performance on the Battlefield by Earl J. Hess. Reviewed by Tim Talbott.

At War with King Alcohol: Debating Drinking and Masculinity in the Civil War by Megan L. Bever. Reviewed by Tim Talbott.

Burnside’s Boys: The Union Army’s Ninth Corps and the Civil War in the East by Darin Wipperman. Reviewed by Doug Crenshaw.

Through Blood and Fire: The Civil War Letters of Major Charles J. Mills, 1862-1865, Revised and Expanded Edition, edited by J. Gregory Acken. Reviewed by Tim Talbott.

The Governor’s Pawns: Hostages and Hostage-Taking in Civil War West Virginia by Randall S. Gooden. Reviewed by Jon-Erik Gilot.

The Demands of Justice: Enslaved Women, Capital Crime, & Clemency in Early Virginia by Tamika Y. Nunley. Reviewed by Meg Groeling.

The Civil War Abroad: How the Great American Conflict Reached Overseas by Charles Priestley. Reviewed by Neil Chatelain.

“If We are Striking for Pennsylvania:” The Army of Northern Virginia and the Army of the Potomac March to Gettysburg, Vol. 2: June 22-30, 1863 by Scott Mingus Sr. and Eric J. Wittenberg. Reviewed by John G. Selby.

When Hell Came to Sharpsburg: The Battle of Antietam and Its Impact on the Civilians Who Called it Home by Steven Cowie. Reviewed by Tim Talbott.

Letters to Lizzie: The Story of Sixteen Men in the Civil War and the One Woman Who Connected Them All, edited by James M. Scythes. Reviewed by Tim Talbott.

Twelve Days: How the Union Nearly Lost Washington in the First Days of the Civil War by Tony Silber. Reviewed by Doug Crenshaw.

Toward A More Perfect Union: The Civil War Letters of Frederic and Elizabeth Lockley, edited by Charles E. Rankin. Reviewed by Sarah Kay Bierle.

A Wilderness of Destruction: Confederate Guerrillas in East and South Florida, 1861-1865 by Zack C. Waters. Reviewed by Patrick Kelly-Fischer.

The Sergeant: The Incredible Life of Nicholas Said – Son of an African General, Slave of the Ottomans, Free Man Under the Tsars, Hero of the Union Army by Dean Calbreath. Reviewed by Meg Groeling.

John T. Wilder: Union General, Southern Industrialist by Steven Cox. Reviewed by Sean Michael Chick.

Private No More: The Civil War Letters of John Lovejoy Murray, 102nd United States Colored Infantry, edited by Sharon A. Roger Hepburn. Reviewed by Tim Talbott.

Agents of Empire: The First Oregon Cavalry and the Opening of the Interior Pacific Northwest during the Civil War by James Robbins Jewell. Reviewed by Patrick Kelly Fischer.

Symbols of Freedom: Slavery and Resistance before the Civil War by Matthew J. Clavin. Reviewed by Tim Talbott.

The Maps of Spotsylvania Through Cold Harbor: An Atlas of the Fighting at Spotsylvania Court House Through Cold Harbor, Including all Cavalry Operations, May 7 through June 3, 1864 by Bradley A. Gottfried. Reviewed by Zachery A. Fry.

Heartsick and Astonished: Divorce in Civil War-era West Virginia, edited by Allison Dorothy Fredette. Reviewed by Jon-Erik Gilot.

Black Sailors in the Civil War: A History of Fugitives, Freemen and Freedmen Aboard Union Vessels by James H. Bruns. Reviewed by Neil Chatelain.

Horse Soldiers at Gettysburg: The Cavalryman’s View of the Civil War’s Pivotal Campaign by Daniel Murphy. Reviewed by Daniel Davis.

Unhonored Service: The Life of Lee’s Senior Cavalry Commander, Colonel Thomas Taylor Munford, CSA by Sheridan R. Barringer. Reviewed by Sean Michael Chick.

The Civil War Soldier and the Press, edited by Katrina J. Quinn and David B. Sachsman. Reviewed by Tim Talbott.

Medicine, Science, & Making Race in Civil War America by Leslie A. Schwalm. Reviewed by Jon Tracey.

On Great Fields: The Life and Unlikely Heroism of Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain by Ronald C. White. Reviewed by Brian Swartz.

African Americans, Death, and the New Birth of Freedom: Dying Free During the Civil War and Reconstruction by Ashley Towle. Reviewed by Tim Talbott.

New Perspectives on Civil War-Era Kentucky, edited by John David Smith. Reviewed by Tim Talbott.

Union General, Samuel Ryan Curtis and Victory in the West by William L. Shea. Reviewed by Phill Greenwalt.

From Antietam to Appomattox with Upton’s Regulars: A Civil War Memoir from the 121st New York Regiment by Dewitt Clinton Beckwith and edited by Salvatore G. Cilella, Jr. Reviewed by Tyler McGraw.

One More War to Fight: Union Veterans’ Battle for Equality through Reconstruction, Jim Crow, and the Lost Cause by Stephen A. Goldman. Reviewed by Sarah Kay Bierle.

Shipwrecked: A True Civil War Story of Mutinies, Jailbreaks, Blockade-Running, and the Slave Trade by Jonathan W. White. Reviewed by Neil Chatelain.

No Place for a Woman: Harriet Dame’s Civil War by Mike Pride. Reviewed by Tim Talbott

The Mobile & Ohio Railroad in the Civil War: The Struggle for Control of the Nation’s Longest Railway by Dan Lee. Reviewed by Sean Michael Chick.

I Dread the Thought of the Place: The Battle of Antietam and the End of the Maryland Campaign by D. Scott Hartwig. Reviewed by Doug Crenshaw.

From Western Virginia with Jackson to Spotsylvania with Lee: The Civil War Diaries and Letters of St. Joseph Tucker Randolph, edited by Peter C. Luebke. Reviewed by Tim Talbott.

The Bone Ring: Civil War Journals of Colonel William James Leonard, edited by Gari Carter. Reviewed by Tim Talbott.

Hood’s Defeat Near Fox’s Gap:  Prelude to Emancipation by Curtis L. Older. Reviewed by John G. Selby.

The Civil War Memoirs of Captain William J. Seymour: Reminiscences of a Louisiana Tiger, edited by Terry L. Jones. Reviewed by Michael C. Hardy.

Funny Thing About the Civil War: The Humor of an American Tragedy by Thomas F. Curran. Reviewed by Jon-Erik Gilot.

Lincoln: Illuminated and Remembered by William C. Harris. Reviewed by Jonathan Noyalas.

Charley: The True Story of the Youngest Soldier to Die in the American Civil War by Brendan J. Lyons. Reviewed by Kevin Pawlak.

Faces of Union Soldiers at Culp’s Hill: Gettysburg’s Critical Defense by Joseph Stahl and Matthew Borders. Reviewed by Tim Talbott.

A Civil War Road Trip of a Lifetime: Antietam, Gettysburg and Beyond by John Banks. Reviewed by Sarah Kay Bierle.

July 22: The Civil War Battle of Atlanta by Earl J. Hess. Reviewed by Patrick Kelly-Fischer.

Final Resting Places: Reflections on the Meaning of Civil War Graves, edited by Brian Matthew Jordan and Jonathan W. White. Reviewed by Tim Talbott.

In Pursuit of Justice: The Life of John Albion Andrew by Stephen Engle. Reviewed by Gordon Berg.

Righting the Longstreet Record at Gettysburg: Six Matters of Controversy and Confusion by Cory M. Pfarr. Reviewed by Bert Dunkerly.

We Fought At Gettysburg: Firsthand Accounts by the Survivors of the 17th Connecticut Volunteer Infantry by Carolyn Ivanoff. Reviewed by Brian Swartz.

Contrasts in Command: The Battle of Fair Oaks, May 31-June 1, 1862 by Victor Vignola. Reviewed by Doug Crenshaw.

The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln: Four Smoking Guns by John C. Fazio. Reviewed by Gordon Berg.

Detour to Disaster: General John Bell Hood’s “Slight Demonstration” at Decatur and the Unravelling of the Tennessee Campaign by Noel Carpenter. Reviewed by Lee White.

The Union Generals Speak: The Meade Hearings on the Battle of Gettysburg by Bill Hyde. Reviewed by Doug Crenshaw.

The Creation of a Crusader by David C. Crago. Reviewed by Sarah Kay Bierle.