2024 Year in Review: The Top 25 Emerging Civil War Book Reviews

by Tim Talbott

Posted on December 28, 2024

To end 2023 we shared a list of all 70+ book reviews that ECW published during the year. It was a significant jump from the 2022 total of 35 reviews. This year, we doubled the previous year’s total yet again. But instead of listing each of 2024’s 140 reviews, we thought it would be a better use of time to list the Top 25 reviews based on readership.

With one of my personal goals for 2024 now accomplished, we won’t attempt to double the book reviews again in 2025, but we will sincerely try to continue to offer high-quality reviews of what is currently being published about the Civil War era.

Like last year, some thanks are in order for helping reach this goal. I would first like to thank the publishers for kindly sending books on our subject matter, as well as responding to my requests for books. There is a significant amount of time, effort, and expense in sending books for ECW to review and we truly appreciate the publishers’ willingness to do so.

The biggest thank you goes to our wonderful team of reviewers who contributed reviews this year. And although they receive the book as a reward for their hard work – and make no mistake, there is work in producing a quality review – for those of us who love books, it is about the best compensation one could receive. Thank you, reviewers!

I also appreciate the thousands of ECW readers. As stated last year, but certainly it bears repeating, we at ECW sincerely hope you find our reviews beneficial to your life-long learning process.

Without further ado, the following are 2024’s Top 25 reviews!

1. The Boy Generals: George Custer, Wesley Merritt, and the Cavalry of the Army of the Potomac, from the Gettysburg Retreat Through the Shenandoah Valley Campaign of 1864
Reviewed by Bert Dunkerly
2. The Battle of Little Bighorn: A New Appraisal
Reviewed by Dan Davis
3. The World Will Never See the Like: The Gettysburg Reunion of 1913
Reviewed by Jon Tracey
4. Longstreet: The Confederate General Who Defied the South
Reviewed by Andrew F. Lang
5. Klan War: Ulysses S. Grant and the Battle to Save Reconstruction
Reviewed by Rich Condon
6. Sexual Violence and American Slavery: The Making of a Rape Culture in the Antebellum South
Reviewed by Sheritta Bitikofer
7. Abolitionist of the Most Dangerous Kind: James Montgomery and His War on Slavery
Reviewed by Tim Talbott
8. Soldier of Destiny: Slavery, Secession, and the Redemption of Ulysses S. Grant
Reviewed by John G. Selby
9. The Limits of the Lost Cause: Essays on Civil War Memory
Reviewed by Patrick Young
10. Creating a More Perfect Slaveholders’ Union: Slavery, the Constitution, and Secession in Antebellum America
Reviewed by Kevin C. Donovan
11. In the Shadow of the Round Tops: Longstreet’s Countermarch, Johnston’s Reconnaissance and the Enduring Battles for the Memory of July 2, 1863
Reviewed by Peter Miele
12. An Unholy Traffic: Slave Trading in the Civil War South
Reviewed by Patrick Kelly-Fischer
13. The Civil War and the Summer of 2020
Reviewed by Sam Flowers
14. Searching for Irvin McDowell: The Civil War’s Forgotten General
Reviewed by Kevin C. Donovan
15. “Tell Mother Not to Worry”: Soldier Stories from Gettysburg’s George Spangler Farm
Reviewed by Peter Vermilyea
16. The Iron Dice of Battle: Albert Sidney Johnston and the Civil War in the West
Reviewed by Sean Michael Chick
17. America’s Unending Civil War: The Enduring Conflict from Jamestown through to Recent Elections
Reviewed by Evan Portman
18. Building a House Divided: Slavery, Westward Expansion, and the Roots of the Civil War
Reviewed by Patrick Kelly-Fischer
19. J. E. B. Stuart: The Soldier and the Man
Reviewed by John B. Sinclair
20. Lincoln’s God: How Faith Transformed a President and a Nation
Reviewed by Max Longley
21. Pulpits of the Lost Cause: The Faith and Politics of Former Confederate Chaplains during Reconstruction
Reviewed by Max Longley
22. Combee: Harriet Tubman, the Combahee River Raid, and Black Freedom During the Civil War
Reviewed by Rich Condon
23. Adelbert Ames, the Civil War, and the Creation of Modern America
Reviewed by Brian Swartz
24. Sleeping with the Ancestors
Reviewed by Sarah Kay Bierle
25. Silent Cavalry: How Union Soldiers from Alabama Helped Sherman Burn Atlanta and Then Got Written Out of History
Reviewed by Doug Crenshaw
Happy reading in 2025!

 

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