​Silent Sentinels: A Reference Guide to the Artillery at Gettysburg
George W. Newton
Savas Beatie, 2017, 288 pp., $22.95
ISBN: 978-1-61121-247-1
Image courtesy of amazon.com
 
If there’s anything I love about Civil War books, it is the occasional reference work on something which I think is needed.  While there are plenty of refence materials out there concerning the Battle of Gettysburg, there was always something which I thought was missing from those texts.  Silent Sentinels: A Reference Guide to the Artillery at Gettysburg is a welcome addition to the reference work of Gettysburg.  While there has been books on the artillery at Gettysburg, only one other is a reference work mentioning Confederate artillery, this book takes the whole battlefield into consideration.  
                George W. Newton hails from Baltimore and graduated from McMurry University in Abilene, Texas in 1973.  He is a veteran of the United States Air Force and served during the Vietnam War.  Newton is retired as an executive of the insurance industry.  He is also a Licensed Battlefield Guide at Gettysburg National Military Park.
                One of the highlights of this book which I greatly appreciate is that while it is subtitled as a reference guide, Newton also gives a great deal of narrative at the opening of the book, not only on the battle itself, but the nature of artillery.  He gives details into the loading and firing of the machines, the makeup of the cannisters and all around gives the reader details into how the cannons worked.  He even gives the reader a tour of the battlefield when it comes to the artillery meaning that you can easily bring this book along with you on any trip to Gettysburg.  It is in the appendices where the reader will find the organization of artillery given by each state, the makeup of the guns used, and the officers for the grouping.  Overall, there is little to say here besides that this book should be used when researching the Battle of Gettysburg and the effect in which the artillery had on the battle.  While other works have just told the story, Newton gives us what we were looking for.  The book is aided by many photographs and maps of the battle which are always good, but the illustrations of artillery are where this book shines in its descriptions.  There are numerous illustrations on how the artillery worked, how they were organized when it company form, and others on how to load and fire depending on the strategies used.  Those were some of the more excellent additions to the work in my opinion when it comes to accompanying material for a reference work.
                I highly recommend this work to anyone interested in the Battle of Gettysburg.  More and more, we are seeing people scratch their heads at the necessity for another book on Gettysburg, but when they are released, I find them to each bring something new and interesting to the study.  This book is a welcome addition to the Gettysburg scholarship and will be used not only by students of the war, but by scholars for years to come.  Highly Recommended.

​Gabriel Rains and the Confederate Torpedo Bureau
W. Davis Waters and Joseph I. Brown
Savas Beatie, 2017, 168 pp., $16.95
ISBN: 978-1-61121-350-8
Image courtesy of amazon.com
 
If there is one aspect of the American Civil War I wish there were more works on, it would be the naval activity during the conflict.  While there are some books out there which encapsulate the war as a whole on the seas, there are very few which deal with specific parts of that theater.  One of the new works by excellent publisher Savas Beatie which has been recently released is Gabriel Rains and the Confederate Torpedo Bureau.  The book not only focuses on the torpedo bureau for the Confederacy, but looks at some of the land conflicts which took advantage of Gabriel Rains’ invention.  This work by W. Davis Waters and Joseph I. Brown showcases the man who invented the “subterra shell” and the “submarine mortar battery,” not only spanning his career, but going over the journal and notebooks used for the creation of min warfare.
                W. Davis Waters received his MA degree at Wake Forest University, then working for the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources for over thirty years.  He has authored many articles including “Deception is the Art of War,” for the North Carolina Historical Review.  In 2005, he received the Order of the Long Leaf Pine, the highest civilian award given by the governor for his services to the state of North Carolina.  Joseph I. Brown earned his MA from George Washington University and spent time working at the Naval Mine Engineering Facility in Yorktown, VA for thirty-one years.  He aided in the design of mines used in the Vietnam War.
                I have to say off the bat, this book has some fascinating details about an officer which some might not be familiar with.  For that alone, this book is worth picking up.  The explicit descriptions of the designs which Rains created are incredible and a great deal of research went into making this pop off the page for me.  As a reader of Civil War works, I had not though much about the design and make up of land mines, or even the submarine mines, which Rains provided throughout the war, but this book has given me the new perspective on things.  The book opens with a biographical sketch of Rains and mentions his service to the United States Army.  But the meat of the book is when the text goes into the detail about how the mines were used in combat, including many accounts which just make the narrative flow incredibly.  To then learn about his career after the war, writing the book for West Point on mine warfare, shows the breadth of the work this man put into the industrialization of warfare and even pointing us in the direction towards what some would consider modern warfare. 
                I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the American Civil War.  While some might think this book would reach more of a niche market, I would ask that you reconsider.  The art of mine warfare and the creation of such a thing should be looked into and if you are interested in the Civil War, this is one to check out.  I want to thank both W. Davis Waters and Joseph I. Brown for this work.  I did not know too much about Gabriel Rains before reading this book, but now I can see the imprint which he left not only on the Civil War, but the world as a whole now.