Our Favorite Books—A Master List

Last month, we asked members of the Emerging Civil War community to share their favorite Civil War books. We thought we’d pull those lists together for you into one giant master list. Ostensibly, this is so you can have plenty of book-buying ideas to share with anyone who asks you, “What should I get you for Christmas?” Or Hanukkah. Or Solstice. Or New Year’s. Or your birthday. Or because they like you. Or because it’s a day that ends in “y.”

After all, do any of us really need an excuse to buy more books?

Well, as it turns out, some of us do need an excuse. How many of you have had a spouse or other loved one warn you, “If you bring one more book into this house…”? So, if you want, you can pass this off as selections for the Emerging Civil War Book Club. Or you can say this is the list of books that all the Cool Kids are reading, and you want to be a Cool Kid, too. Or, alternatively, as our friend Garry Adelman would say, this is the list that will make you a true Civil War Loser, a much-coveted title that only the most “in” of the nerds and losers understand. Spin whatever tale you need to tell, and feel free to throw us under the bus when you do if it’ll help.

On a more serious note, we hope you find something awesome on this list that teaches you something new, that inspires you, that makes you fall in love with Civil War studies all over again.

Happy reading!

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Badeau, Adam. Military History of Ulysses S. Grant: From April 1861 to April 1865, Vol. III.

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

Basler, Roy P.. The Complete Works of Abraham Lincoln.

Blight, David. Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory.

Blight, David. American Oracle: The Civil War in the Civil Rights Era.

Blight, David W.. Fredrick Douglass’s Civil War.

Burton, William L.. Melting Pot Soldiers: The Union’s Ethnic Regiments.

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

Catton, Bruce. The Army of the Potomac.

Catton, Bruce. A Stillness at Appomattox.

Chiaverini, Jennifer. Mrs. Lincoln’s Dressmaker.

Churchill, Winston S.. The American Civil War.

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

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

Connelly, Donald B.. John M. Schofield and the Politics of Generalship.

Connelly, Thomas. Army of the Heartland and Autumn of Glory.

Crane, Stephen. Red Badge of Courage.

Crook, D.P.. Diplomacy During the American Civil War.

Daniel, Larry J.. Soldiering in the Army of Tennessee.

Davis, William C.. Jefferson Davis: The Man and His Hour.

Decaro, Louis A.. Freedom’s Dawn: The Last Days of John Brown in Virginia.

Desjardin, Tom. These Honored Dead: How the Story of Gettysburg Shaped American Memory.

Desjardin, Thomas. Stand Firm Ye Boys from Maine.

Dyer, Robert L.. Jesse James and the Civil War in Missouri.

Ecelbarger, Gary L.. Frederick W. Lander: The Great Natural American Soldier.

Faust, Drew Gilpin. This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War.

Foote, Shelby. The Civil War: A Narrative, 3 vols.

Frank, Joseph & Reaves, George A.. Seeing the Elephant.

Frassanito, William. Antietam: The Photographic Legacy of America’s Bloodiest Day.

Frederickson, George M.. The Inner Civil War.

Freeman, Douglas Southall. Lee’s Lieutenants: A Study in Command, 3 vols.

Frye, Dennis E.. September Suspense: Lincoln’s Union in Peril.

Gaines, W. Craig. Encyclopedia of Civil War Shipwrecks.

Gorra, Michael. The Saddest Words: William Faulkner’s Civil War.

Greene, Wilson. Breaking the Backbone of Rebellion: The Final Battles of the Petersburg Campaign.

Griffith, Paddy. Battle in the Civil War.

Guelzo, Allen C.. Gettysburg: The Last Invasion.

Guelzo, Allen. Fateful Lightning: A New History of the Civil War and Reconstruction.

Guelzo, Allen. Our Ancient Faith: Lincoln, Democracy, and the American Experiment.

Guelzo, Allen C.. Lincoln and Douglas: The Debates That Defined America.

Hennessy, John J.. Return to Bull Run: The Campaign and Battle of Second Manassas.

Higginbotham, Susan. John Brown’s Women.

Horwitz, Tony. Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War.

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

Hunt, Jeffery Wm.. Meade and Lee After Gettysburg, Meade and Lee at Bristoe Station, Meade and Lee at Rappahannock Station.

Jacobson, Eric & Rupp, Richard A.. For Cause and For Country: A Study of the Affair at Spring Hill and the Battle of Franklin.

Jiles, Paulette. Enemy Women.

Johnson, Ludwell H.. Red River Campaign: Politics and Cotton in the Civil War.

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

Judson, Amos. History of the Eighty-Third Regiment Pennsylvania Volunteers.

Kroon, Janet E.. The War Outside My Window: The Civil War Diary of LeRoy Wiley Gresham, 1860-1865.

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

Lowe, Jeffrey C. & Hodges, Sam. Letters to Amanda: The Civil War Letters of Marion Hill Fitzpatrick.

Lowry, Terry. The Battle of Scary Creek: Military Operations in the Kanawha Valley, April-July 1861.

Luraghi, Raimondo. The Confederate Navy.

Manning, Chandra. What This Cruel War Was Over: Soldiers, Slavery, and the Civil War.

McCurry, Stephanie. Confederate Reckoning: Power and Politics in the Civil War South.

McPherson, James. What They Fought For.

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

Morgan, Murray. Confederate Raider in the North Pacific: the Saga of the C.S.S. Shenandoah.

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

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

Oakes, James. Freedom National: The Destruction of Slavery in the United States, 1861-1865.

O’Reilly, Francis Augustin. The Fredericksburg Campaign: Winter War on the Rappahannock.

Osborne, Mary Pope. Civil War on Sunday.

Parsons, Emily Elizabeth & Parsons, Catherine Chandler. Fearless Purpose: A Blind Nurse in the Civil War.

Parry, Owen. Honor’s Kingdom: A Novel of Historical Suspense.

Phillips, Christopher. Damned Yankee: The Life of General Nathaniel Lyon.

Porter (Admiral). Incidents and Anecdotes of the Civil War.

Potter, David. The Impending Crisis: America Before the Civil War, 1848-1861.

Price, James S.. The Battle of New Market Heights: Freedom Will Be Theirs By The Sword.

Prokopowicz, Gerald. All for the Regiment.

Reardon, Carol. Pickett’s Charge in Myth and Memory.

Reese, Timothy J.. Sealed with Their Lives: The Battle of Crampton’s Gap, Burkittsville, MD, September 14, 1862.

Rhea, Gordon. To the North Anna River.

Rhea, Gordon. The Battle of the Wilderness May 5-6, 1864.

Robinson Jr., William Morrison. The Confederate Privateers.

Rosenblatt, Emil & Ruth. Hard Marching Every Day: The Civil War Letters of Private Wilbur Fisk, 1861-1865.

Semmes, Raphael. Memoirs of Service Afloat During the War Between the States.

Shaara, Michael. The Killer Angels.

Sheehan-Dean, Aaron. Why Confederates Fought.

Silliker, Ruth L.. The Rebel Yell & The Yankee Hurrah: A Civil War Journal of a Maine Volunteer.

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

Smith Jr, Myron J.. River Warcraft Books.

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

Thompson, S. Millett. History of the Thirteenth Regiment of New Hampshire Volunteer Infantry in the War of Rebellion 1861-1865.

Warren, Robert Penn. The Legacy of the Civil War.

Webster III, C.L.. Entrepôt: Government Imports into the Confederate States.

Wert, Jeffry. The Heart of Hell: The Soldiers’ Struggle for Spotsylvania’s Bloody Angle.

White, Johnathan W.. Midnight in America: Darkness, Sleep, and Dreams during the Civil War.

Wilkerson, Isabel. Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents.