I responded to a Reddit user’s call for Civil War book suggestions, and it occurred to me that – in this time of gift buying and giving – I could cross post my list here. In no particular order, I give you:

* Drew Gilpin Faust’s This Republic of Suffering deals with the mass death and the effect it had on grief, grieving, burial and memory on America

* Bell Irvin Wiley’s amazing two-part Billy Yank and Johnny Reb take a look at the life and living conditions of the average soldier. Hardtack and Coffee is a similar study.

* I admit, I haven’t read Race and Reunion yet, but I’ve listened to many of David Blight’s lectures on the Civil War in American memory and they are always fascinating. If ever I can find another job this one’s at the top of my wish list.

* Been in the Storm So Long was a book assigned in university that I barrelled through without waiting to find out which chapters were being covered. It investigates the aftermath of slavery in an admittedly depressing though very informative history.

* Team of Rivals deserves every award it racked up. It’s history, biography, and a non-fiction drama all rolled into one.

* Lincoln’s Men is one of my favourite biographies, and it’s a two-fer, though admittedly John Hay – with his extensive c.v. and long life, gets more pages than his friend John Nicolay. If you’ve ever read a touching anecdote about Lincoln in the White House, it was probably recounted by his secretaries. These are fun men to spend time with, and I can see why Lincoln was so endeared to them.

* Co. Aytch was featured in the Ken Burns series, and for good reason. It’s a quick read and really, really entertaining. Sam Watkins had some amazing experiences and tells them with both good humour and poetic sadness.

* I’ve read a few books by Burke Davis and they are always good reads. Not so thin as to be flimsy but definitely a much speedier read than the “heavy artillery” of Shelby Foote or Jim McPherson’s weighty tomes.

* Having said that, the Shelby Foote Narratives are worth the effort it takes to plow through them. It took me longer to read than the war took to fight, but his writing is wonderful. (Be warned: If you’re reading these with the intention of using them as research Foote’s works will not be accepted as historical references, as I learned the hard way in university!)

* Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs is both a depressing look at life as a slave woman and an empowering realisation that slave women could sometimes use their own skill, cunning and talent to escape and make something of themselves. (See also: Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth)

* Mary Chesnut’s Diary served as one of the “voices” in the Ken Burns series. She was a well to do slaveowning society lady from South Carolina, and had access to the Confederate top brass during the war. (Note that her original diary is public domain but the C Vann Woodward edition is considered definitive.)

* Women are also central to the narrative in When the Smoke Cleared at Gettysburg. It’s a really eyeopening account of what was left behind after the armies moved on. Much as I enjoy reading about the war, military actions don’t interest me as much as the social effects and changes those battles wrought. There are a lot of really fascinating angles explored in this “over-published” historical event.

Lots and lots of excellent books out there. I wish you much happy reading for 2017!

Weekly Recap: Feb 3

Here’s a recap of last week’s Civil War Podcast blog topics, and suggested readings for further study.

Post: When the South Wasn’t a Fan of States’ Rights
In late 1860 and early 1861, state-appointed commissioners traveled the length and breadth of the slave South carrying a fervent message in pursuit of a clear goal: to persuade the political leadership and the citizenry of the uncommitted slave states to join in the effort to destroy the Union and forge a new Southern nation.
Directly refuting the neo-Confederate contention that slavery was neither the reason for secession nor the catalyst for the resulting onset of hostilities in 1861, Charles B. Dew finds in the commissioners’ brutally candid rhetoric a stark white supremacist ideology that proves the contrary.

Post: Newspaper Partisanship
A Press Divided provides new insights regarding the sharp political divisions that existed among the newspapers of the Civil War era. These newspapers were divided between North and South, and also divided within the North and South. These divisions reflected and exacerbated the conflicts in political thought that caused the Civil War and the political and ideological battles within the Union and the Confederacy about how to pursue the war.

Post: Lincolniana Auction
This informative Civil War collector’s guide will give you an idea of where to look, how much to pay, and how to keep mistakes to a minimum when collecting Civil War memorabilia. The author educates the reader on recognizing the value of items, emphasizes primary sources, and advises on collecting period representations. Additionally, strong focus is on the less obvious collectible with emphasis on detail and usage.

Post: Civil War Subs
Many people have heard of the Hunley, the experimental Confederate submarine that sank the USS Housatonic in a daring nighttime operation. Less well known, however, is that the Hunley was not alone under the waters of America during the Civil War. Both the Union and Confederacy built a wide and incredible array of vessels that could maneuver underwater, and many were put to use patrolling enemy waters. In Submarine Warfare in the Civil War, Mark Ragan, who spent years mining factory records and log books, brings this little-known history to the surface.The hardcover edition, Union and Confederate Submarine Warfare in the Civil War, was published to wide acclaim in 1999. For this new paperback edition, Ragan has revised and updated the text to include the full story of the Hunley’s recovery and restoration.
Submarine Warfare in the Civil War

Post: Greatest Confederate General
The Civil War Generals offers an unvarnished and largely unknown window into what military generals wrote and said about each other during the Civil War era. Drawing on more than 170 sources—including the letters, diaries, and memoirs of the general officers of the Union and Confederate armies, as well as their staff officers and other prominent figures—Civil War historian Robert Girardi has compiled a valuable record of who these generals were and how they were perceived by their peers. The quotations within paint revealing pictures of the private subjects at hand and, just as often, the people writing about them—a fascinating look at the many diverse personalities of Civil War leadership.

Post: Godfor the Battlefield Vulture
The clash of armies in the American Civil War left hundreds of thousands of men dead, wounded, or permanently damaged. Skirmishes and battles could result in casualty numbers as low as one or two and as high as tens of thousands. The carnage of the battlefield left a lasting impression on those who experienced or viewed it, but in most cases the armies quickly moved on to meet again at another time and place. When the dust settled and the living armies moved on, what happened to the dead left behind?

Post: Dixie’s Loss, Montana’s Gain
In 1862, gold discoveries brought thousands of miners to camps along Grasshopper Creek. By 1864, the Federal government had carved the Montana Territory out of the existing Idaho and Dakota Territories. Gold from Montana Territory fueled the Union war effort, yet loyalties were mixed among the miners. In this compelling collection of stories, historian Ken Robison illustrates how Southern sympathizers and Union loyalists, deserters and veterans, freed slaves and former slaveholders living side by side made a volatile and vibrant mix that molded Montana.

Weekly Recap: Jan 27

Here’s a recap of last week’s Civil War Podcast blog topics, and suggested readings for further study.

Post: Southern Unionist Strongholds
The State of Jones
The State of Jones is a true story about the South during the Civil War—the real South. Not the South that has been mythologized in novels and movies, but an authentic, hardscrabble place where poor men were forced to fight a rich man’s war for slavery and cotton. In Jones County, Mississippi, a farmer named Newton Knight led his neighbors, white and black alike, in an insurrection against the Confederacy at the height of the Civil War. Knight’s life story mirrors the little-known story of class struggle in the South—and it shatters the image of the Confederacy as a unified front against the Union.

Post: Generals Who Fought Against Home & Country
For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War
It is to this question–why did they fight–that James McPherson, America’s preeminent Civil War historian, now turns his attention. He shows that, contrary to what many scholars believe, the soldiers of the Civil War remained powerfully convinced of the ideals for which they fought throughout the conflict. Motivated by duty and honor, and often by religious faith, these men wrote frequently of their firm belief in the cause for which they fought: the principles of liberty, freedom, justice, and patriotism.

Weekly Recap: Jan 20

Here’s a recap of last week’s Civil War Podcast blog topics, and suggested readings for further study.

Post: Whipping Man
God’s Almost Chosen Peoples: A Religious History of the American Civil War (Littlefield History of the Civil War Era)
Throughout the Civil War, soldiers and civilians on both sides of the conflict saw the hand of God in the terrible events of the day, but the standard narratives of the period pay scant attention to religion. Now, in God’s Almost Chosen Peoples, Lincoln Prize-winning historian George C. Rable offers a groundbreaking account of how Americans of all political and religious persuasions used faith to interpret the course of the war.

Post: Southern Jews & the Confederacy
Jews and the Civil War: A Reader
In Jews and the Civil War, Jonathan D. Sarna and Adam Mendelsohn assemble for the first time the foremost scholarship on Jews and the Civil War, little known even to specialists in the field. These accessible and far-ranging essays from top scholars are grouped into seven thematic sections—Jews and Slavery, Jews and Abolition, Rabbis and the March to War, Jewish Soldiers during the Civil War, The Home Front, Jews as a Class, and Aftermath—each with an introduction by the editors. Together they reappraise the impact of the war on Jews in the North and the South, offering a rich and fascinating portrait of the experience of Jewish soldiers and civilians from the home front to the battle front.

Post: Grant’s Anti-Jewish Order
The Jewish Confederates (NS)
Reveals the breadth of Jewish participation in the American Civil War on the Confederate side. Rosen describes the Jewish communities in the South and explains their reasons for supporting the South. He relates the experiences of officers, enlisted men, politicians, rabbis and doctors.

Post: That Obnoxious Order
When General Grant Expelled the Jews
A riveting account of General Ulysses S. Grant’s decision, in the middle of the Civil War, to order the expulsion of all Jews from the territory under his command, and the reverberations of that decision on Grant’s political career, on the nascent American Jewish community, and on the American political process.

Post: Lincoln’s Coffin
Bloody Times: The Funeral of Abraham Lincoln and the Manhunt for Jefferson Davis

Two weeks later, President Lincoln was assassinated, and the nation was convinced that Davis was involved in the conspiracy that led to the crime. Lincoln’s murder, autopsy,and White House funeral transfixed the nation. His final journey began when soldiers placed his corpse aboard a special train that would carry him home to Springfield,Illinois. Along the way, more than a millionAmericans looked upon their martyr’s face,and several million watched the funeral train roll by. It was the most magnificent funeral pageant in American history.

Post: Point of Honor
This show and To Appomattox sound suspect. Why not watch Ken Burns’ The Civil War or Band of Brothers instead?

Weekly Recap: Jan 13

Here’s a recap of last week’s Civil War Podcast blog topics, and suggested readings for further study.

Post: Wisconsin in the Civil War
This Wicked Rebellion: Wisconsin Civil War Soldiers Write Home
From impressions of army life and the South to the hardships of disease and battle, these letters tell the story of the war through the eyes and pens of those who fought in it. This Wicked Rebellion brings to life the heroism and heartache, mayhem and misery of the Civil War, and the powerful role Wisconsin played in it.

Post: Sherman and the burning of Columbia
Sherman and the Burning of Columbia
Marion B. Lucas tackles one of the most debated questions about the Civil War: Who burned South Carolina’s capital city on February 17, 1865? Before the fires had finished smoldering, Confederates and Federals accused each other of starting the blaze, igniting a controversy that has raged for more than a century. To determine the actual origin of the fire, Lucas sifts through myriad official records, newspapers, and eyewitness accounts. The evidence he amasses allows him to debunk many of the myths surrounding the tragedy.

Post: Blacks at the White House levees
Mrs. Lincoln’s Dressmaker
Mrs Keckley described the levees in her behind the scenes role as dressmaker to Mary Lincoln.
Chiaverini’s latest is based on the true story of Elizabeth Keckley, who bought freedom from slavery for herself and her son and went on to become a well-known modiste in Washington. Keckley had a front-row seat to history: she dressed Washington’s A-list, including Jefferson Davis’ wife before they left D.C., and, most intimately, Mary Todd Lincoln.

Post: Long Reach of Civil War Wounds
Learning from the Wounded: The Civil War and the Rise of American Medical Science (Civil War America)
Devine does a remarkable job of showing how wartime experience catalyzed and reconfigured the evolution of American medicine along scientific lines, stimulating vastly increased attention to pathological investigation, experimentation, specialization, and probing of the nature of disease.

Post: Lincoln’s War With the Press
Lincoln and the Power of the Press: The War for Public Opinion
Holzer shows us an activist Lincoln through journalists who covered him from his start through to the night of his assassination—when one reporter ran to the box where Lincoln was shot and emerged to write the story covered with blood. In a wholly original way, Holzer shows us politicized newspaper editors battling for power, and a masterly president using the press to speak directly to the people and shape the nation.

Post: Unfriendly Fires
Freedom by the Sword: The U.S. Colored Troops, 1862-1867
Known collectively as the United States Colored Troops and organized in segregated regiments led by white officers, some of these soldiers guarded army posts along major rivers; others fought Confederate raiders to protect Union supply trains, and still others took part in major operations like the Siege of Petersburg and the Battle of Nashville. After the war, many of the black regiments took up posts in the former Confederacy to enforce federal Reconstruction policy. Freedom by the Sword tells the story of these soldiers’ recruitment, organization, and service.

Post: King Cotton
Empire of Cotton: A Global History
The empire of cotton was, from the beginning, a fulcrum of constant global struggle between slaves and planters, merchants and statesmen, workers and factory owners. Beckert makes clear how these forces ushered in the world of modern capitalism, including the vast wealth and disturbing inequalities that are with us today. The result is a book as unsettling as it is enlightening: a book that brilliantly weaves together the story of cotton with how the present global world came to exist.