Our Favorite Books: Joe Ricci’s Box of Books

ECW welcomes back guest author Joseph Ricci.

“Which one is your favorite?” asked my wife Katharyn.

I responded, “I don’t know. Probably this one on Lincoln,” pointing to my well-tattered copy of Ron C. White’s A. Lincoln. “But on the war, I guess it would have to be Guelzo,” I say, slightly out of breath as I walk another box to the garage.

I have been sorting through books both old and new. I have spent the last few nights surrounded by the ones I have enjoyed, others I have referenced and thoroughly thumbed, and still more that occupy the ever growing and precariously leaning “To Be Read” pile. Each box is labeled and numbered, stacked in the garage, and then that data is entered into a rolling spreadsheet. Every book has a place, and every book is in its place. When the time comes and I am ready to pack my last box of books up for our forthcoming move, one box will simply read “Favorites.” These books reside on a shelf set aside from the rest and cover a wide breadth of topics related to the Civil War and American history in general. So, what books are going into the “Favorite” box? Here’s my list of twenty books that will soon come off the shelf and into the box. There are more, but twenty felt right. My list, for what it is worth, is in no particular order:

1) What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848, by Daniel W. Howe

2) The Impending Crisis: America Before the Civil War, 1848-1861, by David Potter

3) The Complete Works of Abraham Lincoln, in Nine Volumes, edited by Roy P. Basler

4) This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War, by Drew Gilpin Faust

5) The War for the Common Soldier: How Men Thought, Fought, and Survived in Civil War Armies, by Peter S. Carmichael

6) How the Words is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America, by Clint Smith

7) Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory, by David Blight

8) American Oracle: The Civil War in the Civil Rights Era, by David Blight

9) Fateful Lightning: A New History of the Civil War and Reconstruction, by Allen Guelzo

10) Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era, by James M. McPherson

11) The Ordeal of Reunion: A New History of Reconstruction, by Mark W. Summers

12) Our Ancient Faith: Lincoln, Democracy, and the American Experiment, by Allen Guelzo

13) Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, by Isabel Wilkerson

14) The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism, by Edward Baptist

15) The Army of the Potomac Trilogy, by Bruce Catton

16) Army of the Heartland and Autumn of Glory, by Thomas Connelly

17) Searching for Black Confederates: The Civil War’s Most Persistent Myth, by Kevin Levin

18) Pickett’s Charge in Myth and Memory, by Carol Reardon

19) Marching Home: Union Veterans and Their Unending Civil War, by Brian M. Jordan

20) What This Cruel War Was Over: Soldiers, Slavery, and the Civil War, by Chandra Manning

I can have twenty-one, right? Heck, it is my box of favorites after all.

21) The Legacy of the Civil War, by Robert Penn Warren

While my list is not exhaustive, I think it represents the best of Civil War scholarship. I should add too, this does not even touch my reference books or the regimental histories…those have their own shelves and live in other rooms of the house! Anyways, back to packing.

Part of a series.

Joseph Ricci serves as the Historian for The Battle of Franklin Trust.