Books I Read in 2024

The last two years (2022 and 2023), I’ve shared lists of the books that I read during the year. I figured that since I’ve started this little tradition that I’d do the same this year. As I’ve mentioned in the past posts, it’s my hope that a reader may find a title here that they weren’t aware of and that strikes enough interest to read it.

This year I was able to read four more books than last year and 17 more than in 2022.

Like with the past lists, I’ve bolded the titles of the books that I found particularly interesting or enlightening, offered a fascinating argument, or challenged me to think about new ideas.

Here’s hoping you see something you will want to read. Happy reading in 2025!

 

1. This is Our Home: Slavery and Struggle on Southern Plantations by Whitney Nell Stewart

2. Slavery and Freedom in the Bluegrass State: Revisiting My Old Kentucky Home, edited by Gerald L. Smith

 

3. Army of the Potomac: The Civil War Letters of William Cross Hazelton, 8^th Illinois Cavalry, edited by Peter G. Beidler

 

4. Sharpshooter: The Selected Letters and Papers of Maj. Eugene Blackford C.S.A., Vol. 1, edited by Fred Ray

 

5. Abolitionist of a Most Dangerous Kind: James Montgomery and His War on Slavery by Todd Mildfelt & David D. Schafer

6. The Boys of Diamond Hill: The Lives and Civil War Letters of the Boyd Family of Abbeville County, South Carolina, edited by J. Keith Jones

 

7. Christian Citizens: Reading the Bible in Black and White in the Post-Emancipation South by Elizabeth L. Johnson

 

8. Hoosier Farmboy in Lincoln’s Army: The Civil War Letters of Pvt. John R. McClure of the 14^th Indiana Regiment, edited by Nancy Niblack Baxter

 

9. American Visions: The United States, 1800-1860 by Edward L. Ayers

 

10. A Confederate Surgeon’s Letters to His Wife by Spencer Glasgow Welch

 

11. Dismal Freedom: A History of the Maroons of the Great Dismal Swamp by J. Brent Morris

12. From the Wilderness to Appomattox: The Fifteenth New York Heavy Artillery in the Civil War by Edward A. Altemos

 

13. A Few Steps into Hell: The Wartime Letters of the Berryman Brothers, Co. I, 1^st Texas Infantry, Hood’s Brigade, edited by Michael Pittmon and Scott Mingus

 

14. From a True Soldier and Son: The Civil War Letters of William C. H. Reeder, edited by Carolyn and Jack Reeder

 

15. Faces of Union Soldiers at Fredericksburg by Joseph Stahl and Matthew Borders

 

16. Here’s a Letter from Thy Dear Son: Letter of a Georgia Family during the Civil War Era, edited by Edward H. Pulliam

17. The Battle of the Wilderness in Myth and Memory: Reconsidering Virginia’s Most Notorious Civil War Battlefield by Adam H. Petty

 

18. To Walk About in Freedom: The Long Emancipation of Priscilla Joyner by Carole Emberton

 

19. A Post of Honor: The Pryor Letters, 1861-63, edited by Charles A. Adams, Jr.

 

20. The Iron Dice of Battle: Albert Sidney Johnston and the Civil War in the West by Timothy B. Smith

21. General Wadsworth: The Life and Wars of Brevet Major General James S. Wadsworth by Wayne Mahood

 

22. Mr. Dunn Browne’s Experiences in the Army: The Civil War Letters of Samuel W. Fiske, edited by Stephen W. Sears

 

23. Right Up Into the Fire: The Civil War Letters of Lieutenant Henry Ropes, 20^th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, edited by Florian Dexheimer

 

24. The Great Abolitionist: Charles Sumner and the Fight for a More Perfect Union by Stephen Puleo

25. “True Jersey Blues”: The Civil War Letters of Lucian A. Vorhees and William Mackenzie Thompson, 15^th Regiment New Jersey Volunteers, edited by Dominick Mazzagetti

 

26. Alvin York: A New Biography of the Hero of the Argonne by Douglas V. Mastriano

 

27. Dueling Cultures, Damnable Legacies: Southern Violence and White Supremacy in the Civil War Era by James Hill Welborn

 

28. Wide Awake: The Forgotten Force that Elected Lincoln and Spurred the Civil War by Jon Grinspan

29. The Civil War: A Soldier’s Letters Home, 1861-1863 by Samuel Selden Partridge, 13^th New York Volunteers

 

30. Bound to be a Soldier: The Letters of Pvt. James T. Miller, 111^th Pennsylvania Infantry, 1861-1864, edited by Jedediah Mannis and Galen R. Wilson

 

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

32. Black Antietam: African Americans and the Civil War in Sharpsburg by Emilie Amt

 

33. The Bullets Flew Like Hail: Cutler’s Brigade at Gettysburg from McPherson’s Ridge to Culp’s Hill by James L. McLean, Jr.

 

 34. The War that Made America: Essays Inspired by the Scholarship of Gary W. Gallagher, edited by Caroline E. Janney, Peter S. Carmichael, and Aaron Sheehan Dean

 

35. The Vice President’s Black Wife: The Untold Life of Julia Chinn by Amrita Chakrabarti Myers

36. The Civil War as a Theological Crisis by Mark A Noll

 

37. American Citizen: The Civil War Writings of Captain George A. Brooks, 46^th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry, edited by Benjamin E. Meyers

 

38. The Left-Armed Corps: Writings by Amputee Civil War Veterans, edited by Allison M. Johnson

39. Owen Lovejoy and the Coalition for Equality: Clergy, African Americans, Women United for Abolition by Jane Ann Moore and William F. Moore

 

40. Degrees of Equality: Abolitionist Colleges and the Politics of Race by John Frederick Bell

 

41. I Saw Death Coming: A History of Terrorism and Survival in the War against Reconstruction by Kidada E. Williams

42. Heavy Marching: The Civil War Letters of Lute Moseley, 22^nd Wisconsin, edited by Sara DeLuca

 

43. Colors of Blood: Flag Passions of the Confederate South by Robert F. Bonner

 

44. Black Civil War Veterans in Washington State by Cynthia A. Wilson

 

45. No Middle Ground: Thomas Ward Osborn’s Letters from the Field, 1862-1864, edited by Herb S. Crum and Katherine Dhalle

 

46. The Civil War Letters of Joseph Hopkins Twichell: A Chaplain’s Story, edited by Peter Messent and Steve Courtney

 

47. Love and the Working Class: The Inner Worlds of Nineteenth Century Americans by Karen Lystra

 

48. Subdued by the Sword: A Line Officer in the 121^st New York Volunteers by James M. Greiner

 

49. The Radical Advocacy of Wendell Phillips: Abolitionism, Democracy, and Public Interest Law by Peter Charles Hoffer

 

50. Nat Turner, Black Prophet: A Visionary History by Anthony E. Kaye with Gregory P. Downs

51. Bodies in Blue: Disability in the Civil War North by Sarah Handley Cousins

 

52. Tangled Journeys: One Family’s Story and the Making of American History by Lori D. Ginzberg

 

53. Citizen-Officers: The Union and Confederate Junior Officer Corps in the American Civil War by Andrew S. Bledsoe

54. Freedom was in Sight: A Documentary History of Reconstruction in the Washington D.C., Region by Kate Masur and Liz Clarke

 

55. Well Satisfied with My Position: The Civil War Journal of Spencer Bonsall, edited by Michael A. Flannery and Katherine H. Oomens

 

56. The Battle of Cedar Creek: Victory from the Jaws of Defeat by Jonathan A. Noyalas

 

57. Sharpshooter: Hiram Berdan, His Famous Sharpshooters, and Their Sharps Rifles by Wiley Sword

 

58. A Good Cause: Letters from the Ninth New York Heavy Artillery, edited by Jonathan A. Noyalas

 

59. The Diary of a Tarheel Confederate Soldier by Louis Leon

 

60. Record of a Soldier in the Late War: The Confederate Memoir of John Wesley Bone, edited by Julianne Mehegan and David Mehegan

 

61. The Carnage was Fearful: The Battle of Cedar Mountain, August 9, 1862 by Michael E. Block

 

62. The Cry is War, War, War: The Civil War Correspondence of Lieutenants Burwell Thomas Cotton and George Job Huntley, edited by Michael W. Taylor

 

63. The Civil War and the Summer of 2020, edited by Hilary N. Green and Andrew L. Slap

64. In Care of Yellow River: The Complete Civil War Letters of Private Eli Penson Landers to His Mother, edited by Elizabeth Whitley Roberson

 

65. The Civil War Diary of Lt. J. E. Hodgkins, 19^th Massachusetts Volunteers, edited by Kenneth C. Turino

 

66. Soul Liberty: The Evolution of Black Religious Politics in Postemancipation Virginia by Nicole Myers Turner

 

67. Well of Souls: Uncovering the Banjo’s Hidden History by Kristina R. Gaddy

68. As You May Never See Us Again: The Civil War Letters of George and Walter Battle, 4^th North Carolina Infantry, Coming of Age on the Front Line of the War Between the States, edited by Joel Craig and Sharlene Baker

 

69. Scalawag: A White Southerner’s Journey through Segregation to Human Rights Activism by Edward H. Peeples

 

70. Let Us Die Like Men: The Battle of Franklin, November 30, 1864 by William Lee White

 

71. Wounded for Life: Seven Union Veterans of the Civil War by Robert D. Hicks

72. Warriors for Freedom: William Dollarson and Michigan’s Civil War African Americans by Michigan Civil War Association

 

73. The Devil’s Half Acre: The Untold Story of How One Woman Liberated the South’s Most Notorious Slave Jail by Kristen Green

 

74. Dear Eagle: The Civil War Correspondence of Stephen H. Bogardus, Jr. to the Poughkeepsie Daily Eagle, edited by Joel Craig

 

75. Creating the John Brown Legend: Emerson, Thoreau, Douglass, Child, and Higginson in Defense of the Raid on Harpers Ferry by Janet Kemper Beck

76. In the Pines: A Lynching, A Lie, A Reckoning by Grace Elizabeth Hale