​The First Battle for Petersburg: The Attack and Defense of the Cockade City, June 9, 1864
William Glenn Robertson
Savas Beatie, 2015, 182 pp., $27.95
ISBN: 978-1-61121-214-3
Image courtesy of amazon.com
 
The Siege of Petersburg is a behemoth to tackle in a one volume history.  Thankfully, during this sesquicentennial of the Civil War, there have been many multi-volume works on the siege and many other works focusing themselves on the specific battles of the campaign.  The First Battle for Petersburg, by William Glenn Robertson, is one of those works.  However, this work is a revised work for the 150th Anniversary.   Not only is this work revised, it is expanded.  With this book now in print again, the work of Robertson shines and is a great addition to the many works coming out on the Siege of Petersburg.
                William Glenn Robertson received his Ph.D. from the University of Virginia and is the author of Back Door to Richmond: The Bermuda Hundred Campaign, April – June 1864.  He has also authored many other articles on the Civil War.  After serving the academic community for ten years in Virginia, New Mexico, and Colorado, he joined the faculty at the Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas.  There, he wrote the staff manual on the Staff Ride.  When he retired, he retired as the Director, Combat Studies Institute. 
                When The First Battle of Petersburg opens, Robertson sets the scene by not only giving us a look into the organization of the army, but also of the people in the city of Petersburg.   When Robertson talks about the commanders in their introductions, he talks about some of the highs and lows of their careers, but overall only gives us what we need to know for the battle analysis.  He does not spend pages on their political and military failings.  He mentions them in order for us to know, but only gives us what we need to know.  This is one of the many strengths of the work.  It was one of the things which I enjoyed about this; Robertson gets us right to the analysis instead of spending time on biographies of events which we do not even need to know.  When the analysis begins, Robertson handles the research with the highest of care.  Not only is this work greatly researched, but he presents the information in a coherent fashion which is lacking in many other works.  Every sentence in this work is necessary and the narrative is aided by photographs and excellent maps which I have come to expect from this publisher.  Lastly, there are in depth appendices which not only aid in the understanding of the Defense of Petersburg, but are incredible resources for those who research this battle in the future.
                I highly recommend this work to anyone interested in the Siege of Petersburg or anyone who is interested in the Civil War in the East.  The Siege of Petersburg is a long and arduous campaign and by writing these types of books, we can better understand the siege battle by battle.  William Glenn Robertson has delivered a nice new edition of his work.  The narrative flows greatly and he has a firm grasp on his research which is delivered masterfully.  Highly recommended.

​Spies, Scouts, and Secrets in the Gettysburg Campaign
Thomas J. Ryan
Savas Beatie, 2015, 482pp., $32.95
ISBN: 978-1-61121-178-8
Image courtesy of amazon.com
 
There is no doubt in my mind that the Gettysburg Campaign is the most written about campaign and battle than any other in the American Civil War.  In all of American History, the only campaign which rivals Gettysburg, I believe, is D-Day.  All aspects of Gettysburg seemed to have been covered from the organization of the artillery to even, yes, the fences.  When I saw this book coming, however, I was intrigued and looked into the subject.  Scouting and espionage was not yet covered in depth in the campaign.  Well now, the subject has been given due research and the product is amazing.
                Thomas J. Ryan is the former president of the Central Delaware Civil War Round Table and a longtime member of the Gettysburg Foundation and Civil War Trust.  He served three years in the United States Army and more than thirty years with the U.S. Department of Defense in various intelligence operations.  He has published more than one hundred and twenty-five book reviews and articles on Civil War subjects, many of them dealing with the intelligence gathering of the war, and writes a bi-weekly column called “Civil War Profiles” for Coastal Point: a Delaware newspaper.  He authored the essay, Delaware during the Civil War: A Political, Military and Social Perspective.
                Many already know of the spy which set off the Battle of Gettysburg, Harrison.  And for most people, the use of spies during the campaign ends there.  But Ryan, within the first few pages of the book, gives you so much new information in the realm of espionage that it made me wonder why there were so little works devoted to intelligence.  Much of the book dealt with the month of June in 1863 and the ways in which the armies were scouting each other.  Ryan also tackles the task of chronicling the movements of General Stuart at this time bringing about some clarity to the subject, especially for new Gettysburg students.  But it goes even further than that.  Well-seasoned Gettysburg enthusiasts and students will find a great amount of new things in this work which have been masterfully researched by Ryan.  While history has not been so kind to General Hooker, in this work, my opinion seemed to change on the man.  Many have said that while Hooker was not a great military commander, he was an excellent organizer of military intelligence and you see it in this narrative.  For people looking for a narrative of espionage during the battle, you will get a good narrative on that subject, but the true gem of this book is the before and after the battle.  Both armies had good, and bad, ways in which they were scouting each other during this campaign and with the flowing narrative of the writer, you feel as though you were in the tent with the commanders during these important meetings.  There is a level of excitement in the work which is not usually felt in Gettysburg books. 
                I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the Gettysburg Campaign or even the American Civil War.  Thomas J. Ryan handles the subject of intelligence gathering and espionage with a masterful hand.  For those people who think that nothing new can be written about the Gettysburg Campaign, I ask you to read this book.  The amount of information in this volume will send this work into the pantheon of Civil War writing.  It is destined to become a classic.

​“To Prepare for Sherman’s Coming” The Battle of Wise’s Forks, Mark 1865
Wade Sokolosky and Mark A. Smith
Savas Beatie, 2015, 274 pp., $27.95
ISBN: 978-1-61121-266-2
Image courtesy of amazon.com
 
As the Civil War Sesquicentennial comes to a close, the publication of many battles of 1865 have come forth.  Some of these battles are generally unknown to the masses and publications such as “To Prepare for Sherman’s Coming”: The Battle of Wise’s Forks, is a welcome addition to any library.  Both Wade Sokolosky and Mark A. Smith bring to life this crucial battle during the Carolina Campaign of General Sherman.  Once again, Sherman gets quite a bit of attention when it comes to his famous March to the Sea, but it was his Carolina Campaign which brought forward a surrender.  Now, with this book in publication, there is more clarification on this battle and the Carolina Campaign as a whole.
                Wade Sokolosky is a retired Colonel of the United States Army of twenty-five years and is a graduate of East Carolina University.  He is a popular speaker on the Civil War circuit and is the co-author of Sherman’s Carolinas Campaign from Fayetteville to Averasboro and Final Roll Call: Confederate Losses during the Carolinas Campaign.  He also leads tours on Civil War battlefields.  Mark A. Smith is a retired Major of the United States Army of twenty-one years and holds a Masters in Military Studies.  He served in various positions including Scout Platoon Leader, Battalion Executive Officer, and was the Army ROTC Instructor at Virginia Tech.  He is the co-author of “No Such Army Since the Day of Julius Caesar: Sherman’s Carolinas Campaign from Fayetteville to Averasboro which he authored with Wade Sokolosky.
                One of the biggest questions which I ask myself when reviewing a book is “what new thought does this book bring to the table?”  Overall, I think the existence of this book brings something new to the table.  Overall, outside of primary sources and one volume histories of the war, this is one of the few works which handles the subject of The Battle of Wise’s Forks.  As the narrative went on through the book, they handle this subject masterfully with excellent explanations to the situation at hand.  This battle was a crucial Union victory in the Carolinas Campaign and both Wokolosky and Smith have given it due diligence in their research.  One of the more important things to me going into this book was the portrayal of Braxton Bragg.  Recently, I had some experiences with books on Bragg as painting him as a whining commander.  But here, in “To Prepare for Sherman’s Coming,” I felt as though Bragg was being treated with the full respect he commanded and deserved.  Also, while most of this campaign surrounds itself with General Sherman, it was nice to see attention paid to both John Schofield and Jacob Cox who were instrumental in the victory here.  The book is filled with portraits and excellent maps which I have come to expect from this publisher. 
                I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the last year of the Civil War, or anyone interested in the Carolinas Campaign.  Both Sokolosky and Smith have written other works, and some on the way, dealing with this mostly ignored campaign and their work is excellent.  The research is second to none and their narrative flows gracefully across the pages.  Highly recommended.
 

​A Want of Vigilance: The Bristoe Station Campaign
Bill Backus and Robert Orrison
Savas Beatie, 2015, 170 pp., $14.95
ISBN: 978-1-61121-300-3
Image Courtesy of amazon.com
 
Most Civil War readers have little knowledge on the Bristoe Station Campaign, but recent works have surrounded themselves with this fight.  There has been a new atlas about the campaign and some new books as well, but overall, there is no book which serves as a great introduction to the campaign.  This is where The Emerging Civil War Series shines.  One of the new works in this series is A Want of Vigilance which details the Bristoe Station Campaign and the people surrounding the events.  The finished product is not only an incredible introduction, but is also a great work for future research which I have come to expect from The Emerging Civil War Series.
                Bill Backus is a native of Connecticut and graduated from the University of Mary Washington with a Bachelor’s degree in Historical Preservation.  Bill is working as a historian for a number of Civil War sites in Northern Virginia and has worked for the National Park Service at Vicksburg National Military Park along with the Petersburg National Battlefield.  Robert Orrison has been a historian for more than twenty years and received his Master’s degree in Public History from George Mason University.  He oversees the day-to-day operations of a large municipal historic site program in Northern Virginia.  He serves as a member of the Board of Directors of the Bull Run Civil War Roundtable and the Mosby Heritage Area Association along with other organizations.
                The first thing I would like to say about this book is that it easily breaks up the campaign.  For someone who does not know a lot about Bristoe Station, this breaking up of battles helps create a better understanding as to what happened.  I discovered that most people do not know as much about this campaign as other campaigns which happened in the year of 1863, but it was incredibly important nonetheless.  There are also appedicies that deal with more detailed aspects of the battle such as cavalry actions of the 1st Maine, the Fall of 1863, and a more in depth look at the Battles of Rappahannock Station and Kelly’s Ford.  In the chapters dealing with the battles, the narrative of the battle is aided by not only wonderful maps, but also drawings from the time and pictures of the field.  One of the most fascinating things about this book was that it looked at the campaign not only as a standalone campaign, but also as the campaign after Gettysburg.  The people involved are all familiar characters to most readers of the Civil War but their situations in this narrative are new to some. 
                Bill Backus and Robert Orrison have done a great service to the world of Civil War academia by writing this work, A Want of Vigilance, on the Bristoe Station campaign.  While most people ignore the campaign due to the actions of the army earlier in the year of 1863, these two historians have created one of the best introductory works on the Bristoe Station Campaign.  I highly recommend this addition to The Emerging Civil War Series.  

​Pickett’s Charge at Gettysburg: A Guide to the Most Famous Attack in American History
James A. Hessler, Wayne E. Motts, and Cartographer Steven A. Stanley
Savas Beatie, 2015, 310 pp., #37,95
ISBN: 978-1-61121-200-6
Image courtesy of amazon.com
 
Ever since the Battle of Gettysburg came to a close, one of the most popular areas of the battlefield to write about was Pickett’s Charge.  Numerous books have brought forth information about this crucial event and some have even attempted to change thoughts about this attack.  With so many works on the market about Pickett’s Charge, what makes Pickett’s Charge at Gettysburg stand out from all of the others?  Do we need yet another work about Pickett’s Charge?  I think it is safe to say that this book is unlike any other that deals with the subject of this attack.  James A. Hessler, Wayne E. Motts, and Steven A. Stanley have brought something different, but it’s not what you might think.
                James A. Hessler is a Licensed Battlefield Guide at Gettysburg and is most famously known for his work Sickles at Gettysburg.  It was that book that won him the Batcheldar-Coddington Award and the Gettysburg Civil War Round Table’s Distinguished Book Award as the most outstanding work on the Gettysburg Campaign.  Wayne E. Mott is also a Licensed Battlefield Guide at Gettysburg and has been for close to thirty years.  He is the chief executive officer of The National Civil War Museum in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.  Steven A. Stanley is the cartographer for this work and is one the most celebrated Civil War cartographers.  He co-authored, and was the cartographer, for The Complete Gettysburg Guide along with J.D. Petruzzi.  He is the winner of the U.S. Army Historical Foundation’s 2009 Distinguished Writing Award.
                One of the things I am always on the lookout for in a new Civil War book is, what is different in this work that I cannot find anywhere else?  Pickett’s Charge at Gettysburg is not only a book which has a historical narrative, it is a guide book to the areas of the battlefield which surround the large scope of Pickett’s Charge.  Throughout the work, there are four separate tours which bring you around the areas of the field: the Confederate Battle Line, Trimble Charge, Pickett’s Charge, and the Union Battle Line.  The tours are fueled by historical narrative aided by the gorgeous maps of Stanley.  The maps are also labeled with stops which you should make as one touring the field.  What was one of the more interesting parts of the narrative was the attention which was made to Trimble’s Charge which I think is one of the more ignored parts of the Pickett’s Charge story.  There is also great attention to the detail of Bliss Farm and the attacks made around it.  There is the myth that no fighting happened on the fields of Pickett’s Charge until the cannonade started, but the action at Bliss Farm was quite heated on the morning of July 3rd.  Thankfully, this book gives attention to that detail and also gives a great tour of where the farmhouse stood.  Overall, if there is a section of the Pickett’s Charge fields you wanted information on, this book has covered it in great detail, more so than other works on Pickett’s Charge.
                I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the Battle of Gettysburg.  The work of James A. Hessler, Wayne Motts, and Steven A. Stanley shines in this work and their grasp of knowledge of the subject is second to none.  This book brings a new look into Pickett’s Charge in the realm that this is not only a historical work, but a guide book that should be brought on the battlefield every time anyone travels there.  All three of these historians should be held in the highest regard of Civil War academia and I look forward to works they will present in the future.

​Grant’s Last Battle: The Story Behind the Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant
Chris Mackowski
Savas Beatie, 2015, 168 pp., $14.95
ISBN: 978-1-61121-160-3
Image Courtesy of amazon.com
 
One of the greatest Civil War memoirs are the Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant.  However, there are those who do not know about the battle which Grant took to write these incredible passages.  As part of the Emerging Civil War Series, Chris Mackowski has given us a look into the personal difficulties of what it took to write these sentences.  We see General Grant now as a great hero of American History but there are those who believe that without his Personal Memoirs, he would never have gained the status of one of the great literary figures of his time.
                Chris Mackowski is the cofounder of Emerging Civil War and has authored more than a dozen books throughout this series.  He has written articles for such magazines like Civil War Times, America’s Civil War, Hallowed Ground, and Blue and Gray.  He is a writing professor at Saint Bonaventure University in Allegany, New York and a historian-in-residence at Stevenson Ridge which is a historic property on the Spotsylvania Battlefield.  Other works of his include Chancellorsville’s Forgotten Front, The Dark, Close Wood: The Wilderness, Ellwood and the Battle that Redefined Both, and Seizing Destiny: The Army of the Potomac’s Valley Forge and the Civil War Winter that Saved the Union. 
                Grant’s Last Battle is a unique work which encapsulates the final years of Grant’s life and the struggles which he went through in order to write his memoirs.  Though he was the commander who gained the surrender of Robert E. Lee and a President of the United States, Grant went through financial ruin later in his life.  Mackowski chronicles this descent towards the ruin and tackles the subject with a definite grace and research.  His historiography within these pages is second to none as he introduces the many “characters” who were part of Grant’s life during this time.  One of the more interesting chapters was the one which dealt with Mark Twain and not only tackled the great American writer, but also dealt with General Lew Wallace.  Many might know Wallace from his bestseller Ben-Hur,but there were also differences, personally, between Grant and Wallace.  Grant blamed Wallace for decisions made at the Battle of Shiloh, but due to the writing of the memoirs, there were divisions which seemed to be repaired.  As with many of the other works in the Emerging Civil War Series, the book has numerous appendices which add to the work of the author.  Some of the subjects include Grant’s Tomb, myths of Grant, and the friendship between Grant and Twain.   Overall, what is reached in this book is a complete look into the writing of Grant’s memoirs and the fight he had after his presidency.
                I highly recommend this book not only to fans of the Emerging Civil War Series, but to people who are interested in both General and President Grant.  Within these pages, a sad tale is told about the end of his life, but it is a book worth reading to get an idea of the complete spectrum of the man.  Mackowski has done another great service to the Civil War realm by giving us another book about a lesser known subject on a great man.

The Gettysburg Cyclorama: The Turning Point of the Civil War on Canvas
Chris Brenneman and Sue Boardman, Photographs by Bill Dowling
Savas Beatie, 2015, 222 pp., $34.95
ISBN: 978-1-61121-264-8
Image courtesy of amazon.com
 
When you talk to most people who have visited the Gettysburg Cyclorama, they talk about the incredible awe which they felt when they first looked at the painting.  It was one of the reactions I had when I looked at the painting for the first time.  But for the life of me, I could not find a book which encapsulated the entire history and analysis of the painting.  Until now.  In The Gettysburg Cyclorama, Sue Boardman and Chris Brenneman talk about the history of the painting and analyze the panels of the canvas in incredible detail including photographs by Bill Dowling. 

                Chris Brenneman, Sue Boardman, and Bill Dowling, the photographer of this work, are Licensed Battlefield Guide at Gettysburg National Military Park.  For the work of this book, Chris Brenneman has spent hundreds of hours with this incredible painting looking for the minute intricacies which have been pointed out in the panels throughout the work.  Sue Boardman was a crucial member of the Gettysburg Foundation for the conservation of the Cyclorama and has authored many books and articles.  The photographer, Bill Dowling, is an award winning photographer who specializes in historical landscapes and has a special interest in Gettysburg.  Many of his photographs have been used in books and magazines and have even made it on the Jumbotron in New York’s Time Square.

                This book is an incredible accomplishment.  While there have been other books about the Gettysburg Cyclorama, this one stands out from the rest.  Not only does the book talk about the history of the painting itself, the authors and photographer go into each panel and point out what all the details on the panel are.  These are often accompanied by excellent analyses on both the painting and the location of the battlefield which the canvas has shown.  Such small details which amazed me was the placement of Robert E. Lee on the canvas.  When you first look at the painting, you cannot even see where Lee could even be, but with the close up image from these authors and photographer, you can see where Lee was placed.  Another commander who I never spotted on the painting was George Pickett who also appears quite small on the painting.  Only with these analyses and photographs of the painting do these small details come out.  But the most amazing thing which I never noticed and always thought it was an effect on the painting was the pencil drawing near Armistead’s head never painted over by the painter.  Now, I cannot see Armistead without seeing the pencil drawings. 
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                This book is excellent.  If you are a fan of the Gettysburg Cyclorama, you need to buy this book.  If you are a fan of the Battle of Gettysburg, you need to buy this book.  If you are a fan of Civil War artwork, you need to buy this book.  It not only talks about the Gettysburg Cyclorama, but talks about the tour of the Cyclorama and differences between the many different ones.  Chris Brenneman and Sue Boardman should be praised for the work which they accomplished here.  Bill Dowling’s photographs are spectacular.  I cannot say enough good things about this book.  I highly recommend The Gettysburg Cyclorama.