Posted on 01/28/2009 4:55:40 PM PST by sonrise57
Hi All, I just finished reading "The Last Full Measure". I am putting together my 2009 reading plan and I want to start on another Civil War work. What are you all reading these days. Those of you who are civil war buffs . . . what should I put on my list for this year.
There is so much research into minute family detail and such gleaned from so many diverse archives and sundry collections, along with such a wealth of information, that I wonder how he ever did it in one lifetime.
I was thinking of starting to dig into the Shelby Foote trilogy. Any opinions. I just took at look at the Catton series and it looks really good as well.
“I was thinking of starting to dig into the Shelby Foote trilogy. Any opinions. I just took at look at the Catton series and it looks really good as well.”
Both are excellent and particularly worth reading if you are just beginning to read about the civil war. Once you have a good overview I would recommend
Gettysburg by Sears
Landscape Turned Red also by Sears (Antietam battle)
Another great book not specifically about the war but good background is Team of Rivals by Goodwin.
ML/NJ
CW1 or CW2?
ping
For a bit of the naval side of the Confederacy, I found “Sea of Gray” by Tom Chaffin to be interesting. The story of the commerce raider, Shenandoah. 58,000 mile cruise.
That is the place to start.
It is a masterpiece of literature as well as history.
When niteowl77 and I were dating, I asked her grandmother about a portrait hanging in the family farmhouse showing a soldier in a rather unusual dragoon-looking cap and a more typical uniform jacket, and she informed me it was a grandfather or great-grandfather (I can't recall which), and that "He was a marine, but in the Army. Not in the Marine Corps," which made no sense to me. Unfortunately, a series of circumstances intervened to prevent us from tracing the old gent, and we still didn't know what to make of the non-Marine marine... but just before the farmhouse was demolished after sitting empty for a while, we walked around the farm and discovered a decaying old book in the attic area entitled "History of the Ram Fleet and Marine Brigade." If nothing else, we now knew what grandma was saying.
Anyway, when I stumbled across the book "Ellet's Brigade: The Strangest Outfit of All," by Chester Hearn, I already knew what it was about. Indeed an odd bit of history there, and not a bad little book about something obscure enough that I had never heard about it... my dad taught American History for 30 years and even he wasn't aware of the brigade. So now I have read that book, along with Gary Joiner's "Mr. Lincoln's Brown Water Navy" and "Island No. 10" by Larry Daniel and Lynn Bock.
I don't have anything Civil War on deck, but am working through Dan Rottenberg's book about the CW-era character James A. Slade (mentioned in Mark Twain's "Roughing It"), entitled "Death of a Gunfighter".
Mr. niteowl77
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For some Civil War history that you’ve likely not seen, I will plug my book. It covers the war in Indian Territory, Arkansas, which is rarely touched by others. The war meant different things to different groups and places. I was blessed with volumes of personal family letters to construct this.
http://jesusweptanamericanstory.blogspot.com/
Special offer for Freepers. Please don’t buy one from the website, just freepmail or email me.
The best Civil War collection is Battles and Leaders of the Civil War. Long out of print, the four volume set is still available through the Amazon Marketplace. B&L was compiled from 1st person accounts of the war which ran in the Century Magazine approximately fifteen years after the war ended. This was a convenient time because while memories of the events were still relatively fresh, the passion which might color the recollection of those times had cooled.
I would also check out the on-line 1st person narrative collection at "Documenting the South" at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (http://docsouth.unc.edu/fpn/). One of my favorites there is Richard Taylor's Destruction and Reconstruction. I seems also that ex-slave memoirs were quite popular in the late 19th century; many of them are found in that collection, and they are not all all what you would expect.
*Gettysburg, the Second Day by Harry Pfanz
Peter Cozzens trilogy
* No Better Place To Die, The Battle of Stones River
* This Terrible Sound- Battle of Chickamauga
* Shipwreck of Their Hopes, Siege of Chattanooga
*Andersonville, The Last Depot by William Marvel
*The Gettysburg Campaign: A Study in Command by Edwin Coddington
*”The Civil War” Shelby Foote’s 3 volumes
*Stephen Sears books are all good as are Catton and Gordon Rhea.
I’ve been a Civil War buff for ten years and continue to add to my reading “to do list”.
Shelby Foote’s 3 vols are great but it will take a long time. I got a boxed set for Christmas two years ago and haven’t finished yet, in part to starting on the “Battles and Leaders” series. I think if I live to be 150 years old I won’t finish reading everything of interest on the CW.
Mary Chestnut’s Diary. A primary source...firsthand account of an upper class Southern woman during the war. I couldn’t put it down.
The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War (Paperback)
by Thomas Dilorenzo
A must read.
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