2024 Year in Review: Blog Series
The Emerging Civil War Blog hosted three special series in 2024. Our National Cemeteries took readers to many far-flung official resting places for Civil War heroes (and, of course, heroes from many other wars). Our Favorite Books introduced readers to familiar and unique book titles and topics (including Civil War fiction, a genre with unlimited potential). The ongoing A Thousand Words a Battle blends the extraordinary battlefield photography of Chris Heisey with insightful written history provided by ECW members and guest authors.
Tied in with Memorial Day and its post-Civil War origination, the Our National Cemeteries series opened on May 20 with ECW member Bert Dunkerly’s introduction of national cemeteries. The series highlighted national cemeteries in the Eastern and Western theaters while overlapping the 2024 Memorial Day weekend.
Among the different locations, Derek Maxfield toured Andersonville National Cemetery and poignantly linked its Civil War residents to their counterparts in recent wars. Terry Rensel took ECW’s readers to northwestern Pennsylvania to visit the Erie Soldiers and Sailors Home Cemetery, and Patrick Kelly-Fischer took us to the Southwest to explore the Santa Fe National Cemetery in New Mexico.
The National Cemeteries series featured 21 posts.
Check out this blog series’ collection at Our National Cemeteries.
Kicking off on November 4, the Our Favorite Books series asked ECW members and a few surprise guests to share their favorite Civil War books with ECW’s readers. Most contributors shared their top five choices, but among the 17 contributors was one who named seven titles — and guest author Joe Ricci shared a box of books!
Savas Beatie publisher Ted Savas shared his top 5 titles, and ECW readers got the opportunity to list their favs in the Question of the Week: What are your favorite Civil War books? Twenty-three people responded!
The series featured 20 posts.
Check out this blog series’ collection at Our Favorite Books.
Chris Mackowski introduced the A Thousand Words a Battle series on September 13. “A picture is worth a thousand words, as the old saying goes,” Chris wrote. Outstanding battlefield photographer Chris Heisey had approached Chris a few years earlier about a book project that would “match some of his battlefield photography with very specific kinds of words.”
Although the book project did not happen, Chris Heisey’s photographs needed to be seen in their Civil War context. Jon-Erik Gilot, the ECW secretary, “who is an archivist in his day job, noticed we had this wonderful collection in the ECW archives and suggested we do something with it on the blog,” Chris Mackowski wrote.
Thus developed A Thousand Words a Battle, with each post featuring a specific battle, a related Chris Heisey photograph, and written commentary by an ECW member or guest author. Having run through the fall, this series will continue into the future!
Check out this series’ collection at A Thousand Words a Battle.
