The Veteran's Bookstore
Civil War : A Narrative (3 Vol. Set)
by Shelby Foote.
In 1954, Shelby Foote was a young novelist with a contract to write a short history of the Civil War. It soon became clear, however, that he had undertaken a long-term project. Twenty years later Foote finally completed his massive and essential trilogy on the War Between the States. His three books are prose masterpieces with lively characterizations and gripping action. Although Foote never sacrifices the truth of what happened to his penchant for artistry, his skills as a novelist serve him well. Reading all three of these books will take some time, but they are worth the investment--especially if you, like Foote, have a touch of sympathy for the South's lost cause.
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Eye of the Storm : A Civil War Odyssey
by Robert Knox Sneden (Illustrator), Charles F., Jr. Bryan (Editor), Nelson D. Lankford.
An unusual soldier's record of the Civil War has surfaced. Sneden was an ordinary volunteer in the Union army, but he could draft landscape views and maps, a talent gladly utilized by the Army of the Potomac. Sneden produced hundreds of maps and illustrations during the war, and afterward he tried to have them and his memoir published. No publishing house saw profit in it, until now, and the contemporary commercial confidence rests on the vivid impression made by the drawings and Sneden's personal story.
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The Civil War Trilogy : Gods and Generals/the Killer Angels/the Last Full Measure
by Michael Shaara, Jeff M. Shaara.
Author Jeff M. Shaara rounds out the Civil War Trilogy started by his late father Michael Shaara, whose book The Killer Angels described the Battle of Gettysburg. While Gods and Generals covered action prior to Gettysburg, The Last Full Measure picks up with Confederate General Robert E. Lee's retreat from Pennsylvania and continues through the end of the war. The younger Shaara focuses on the characters of Lee and Union commander Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, both of whom play prominent roles in the earlier books. He also introduces a new one: Ulysses S. Grant, the Union general who would finally defeat the South--something no soldier before him could manage. The Last Full Measure is often exciting and poignant, and fans of The Killer Angels and Gods and Generals won't be disappointed. A nicely boxed edition of this classic historical fiction.
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The Civil War Chronicle
by J. Matthew Gallman (Editor) .
In this moving day-by-day chronicle, we hear the real voices of the soldiers, nurses, farmers, laborers, slaves, and freed people who lived through America's most tragic conflict. This much-needed collection of the letters, diaries, speeches, telegrams, newspaper accounts, and official battlefield reports penned by those people presents an astonishing array of perspectives and conflicting accounts of this very personal war. Hundreds of period black and white images enhance the firstperson accounts and help recapture the texture of life at all levels and on both sides of the Civil War.
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Battle Cry of Freedom : The Civil War Era
by James M. McPherson.
The esteemed, Pulitzer Prize-Winning history of the Civil War that brings to vivid life, the generals, the presidents, the soldiers, politicians, Abolitionists, Southern fire-eaters, Northern barn-burners, Copperheads, and Know-Nothings. An instant classic, this is the single volume on the tragic war and its background that every historian--amateur or trained--will want to have on the shelf to read again and again.
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The Amazing Civil War
by Webb Garrison.
Reviewer:
I have three of Garrison's books: The Amazing Civil War, Civil War Curiosities, and More Civil War Curiosities. I would recommend each and every book to anyone! The facts that Garrison writes about are both interesting and captivating and being a high school American History teacher, I plan on using the facts that I have found no where else to captivate my students and give them a perspective on the war that they may have never found otherwise.
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Mosby's Rangers
by Jeffry D. Wert.
No single battalion was more feared during the Civil War than the 43rd Battalion of Virginia Cavalry, better known as "Mosby's Rangers." Here, in vivid and fascinating detail, is the most authoritative account of the Rangers' infamous adventures, written by a prize-winning historian. ". . . recommended for nearly any Civil War collection."--Booklist. 16 pages of photographs.
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Robert E. Lee
by Roy Blount.
An offbeat Southern commentator takes a fresh look at the great Confederate hope, Civil War hero and nationally controversial figure.
Iconic Virginian, brilliant general, and complex human being --- that last aspect of Robert E. Lee has daunted biographers and been disregarded by partisans. Now Roy Blount Jr. combines acute character insight with lively storytelling and full-hearted Southern directness to craft this unique portrait.
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Chancellorsville
by Stephen W. Sears.
Chancellorsville was one of the Civil War's pivotal campaigns, a great victory for the South that, however, led directly to the death of top Confederate general Stonewall Jackson.
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The Blue and the Gray : The Story of the Civil War As Told by Participants
by Henry Steele Commager (Editor), Douglas Southall Freeman.
Reviewer: Just the notes connecting the first person peices of these volumes make for a good history of the Civil War! They're short but good. But that is not the point. The accounts themselves are by soldiers (and sometimes civilians) written as they lived the adventure and tragedy of the Civil War. Cavalry raids come to life. Battles materialize before your eyes. Even the "dull" days of waiting are filled with a vibrance. All this is done, not by "authors" but by folks like you and me. And it is true from the begining to end. The descriptions of the very first shot of the war at Fort Sumpter are absolutely paralyzing!
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Tempest at Ox Hill: The Battle of Chantilly
by David A. Welker
The first-ever popular account of a tide-turning Civil War battle that saved the Union capital-but at a horrific price.
Every Civil War buff has heard of the Battle of Chantilly, the bloody 1862 engagement fought in a driving rainstorm only twenty miles from Washington that claimed the lives of two of the Union's most promising generals. Yet few have known the full story of courage and human drama because no one has ever produced a lively and historically accurate account of the battle-until now.
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Grant
by Jean Edward Smith.
Hiram Ulysses Grant--mistakenly enrolled in the United States Military Academy as Ulysses Simpson Grant, and so known ever since--was a failure in many of the things to which he turned his hand. An indifferent, somewhat undisciplined cadet who showed talent for mathematics and painting, he served with unexpected distinction in the U.S. war against Mexico, then repeatedly went broke as a real-estate speculator, freighter, and farmer. His reputation was restored in the Civil War, in which he fulfilled a homespun philosophy of battle: "Find out where your enemy is. Get at him as soon as you can. Strike him as hard as you can and as often as you can, and keep moving on."
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