Our Favorite Books: Pat Kelly-Fischer’s Top 5 Books

Picking my five favorite Civil War books? When Chris Mackowski prompted us for this, it sounded like an easy question!

I love books, I love reading about the Civil War, this is a walk in the park. Hell, I can think of dozens of ideas for my top five…

And there’s the problem.

Across the thousands and thousands of books about the Civil War, how do I pick just 5 favorites? Every time I’ve come back to try and draft this post, I’ve had MORE ideas to put on the table.

So here are my top choices, regretfully edited down from what started as a top dozen-or-more:

The Three-Cornered War: The Union, the Confederacy, and Native Peoples in the Fight for the West by Megan Kate Nelson

This past winner of Emerging Civil War’s Book Award took one of the least remembered parts of the war, and transformed it from a passing interest into a subject I’m fascinated by, and have now spent the past several years studying and writing about in depth.

The Gettysburg Campaign: A Study in Command by Edwin B. Coddington

How many books are so singularly iconic that you can refer to them simply by the author’s last name?

When you say “Coddington”, every student of the Civil War will picture the same slate gray doorstop of a book. That alone is testament to how well this definitive campaign study has held up over the years, which is all the more remarkable considering how much ink has been spilled in relation to Gettysburg.

An Unholy Traffic: Slave Trading in the Civil War South by Robert K.D. Colby

I’ve written at length about this book before, so for today I’ll leave it at this: While not every Civil War book is going to be of interest to every single person who studies the era, An Unholy Traffic is the rare work that every student of the conflict should take the time and effort to read and think about.

Lost for the Cause: The Confederate Army in 1864 by Steven H. Newton

With this year being the 160th anniversary, I’ve been thinking a lot about the course of the war in 1864. The outcome can feel inevitable with the benefit of hindsight today.

Lost for the Cause really broke new ground in laying out the lengths the Confederacy went to in order to keep viable armies in the field, and changed how I think about the campaigns of 1864.

Meade and Lee After Gettysburg, Meade and Lee at Bristoe Station, Meade and Lee at Rappahannock Station by Jeffrey Wm Hunt

Yes, I’m cheating here by picking a three-book series. But for as much attention as has been devoted to the Army of the Potomac and the Army of Northern Virginia, let alone the Civil War more widely, Hunt has demonstrated that there are still new, important stories to tell.

Across three volumes – and I’m eagerly awaiting the fourth – he’s woven an incredibly compelling series of books about Virginia campaigns in the forgotten months of 1863 after Gettysburg. And it’s more exciting for being a rare time when I can read about a Civil War campaign and not come in knowing exactly how it will go.

Part of a series.