I wanted to like Jeff Shaara’s latest Civil War novel, A Chain of Thunder: A Novel of the Siege of Vicksburg. Really, I did. It seems like I say that every time I pick one up. After all, I very much appreciate all Shaara has done to generate broad interest in the Civil War, eclipsed in the modern era only by Ken Burns. Also, on the couple of ( Read more... )

Review by Paul Taylor ( Read more... )

Library Bookwatch: July 2013
James A. Cox, Editor-in-Chief
Midwest Book Review
278 Orchard Drive, Oregon, WI 53575

The Civil War Shelf

A Season of Slaughter
Chris Mackowski and Kristopher D. White
Savas Beatie
PO Box 4527, El Dorado Hills, CA 95762
9781611211481 $12.95 www.savasbeatie.com

Part of the “Emerging Civil War Series”, a Season of ( Read more... )

The Battle of Gettysburg certainly ranks as one of America’s great stories-but how it became such a great story is a story unto itself ( Read more... )

A review of Chancellorsville's Forgotten Front from Civil War Books and Authors:
( Read on, Macduff.... )

I first met the Iron Brigade, like so many Americans, as they marched onto the field on the first day of Gettysburg, their black hats announcing their appearance at the nick of time. Michael Shaara’s The Killer Angels (and the subsequent film Gettysburg) makes much of the Iron Brigade’s timely appearance, in part to add dramatic weight to the death ( Read more... )

When I give battlefield tours, I make it a point to draw attention to the beautiful natural environments we get to enjoy while we’re out on the battlefield. I often contrast that against the horror of the events that took place there during the war, and I try to explain how the landscape affected-and, in turn, was affected by-the stories there ( Read more... )

No Civil War battlefield offers a writer more metaphoric possibility than the Wilderness. Not only was the Wilderness a virtually impenetrable second-growth forest-“the dark, close wood” and “one of the waste places of nature,” as soldiers called it-but the very idea of “wilderness” suggests a place and a time of being directionless and lost. One ( Read more... )

I finished The Teeth May Smile, but The Heart Does Not Forget: Murder and Memory in Uganda by Andrew Rice. It was a good primer on Uganda's violent modern history, from independence through the Idi Amin era and into the long reign of current president, Yoweri Museveni. The story centers around the murder case of a regional tribal leader in the 70s ( Read more... )

With the 151st anniversary of the Battle of Ball’s Bluff coming up, I wanted to take a minute to plug James Morgan’s fantastic little book about the battle, A Little Short of Boats: The Battles of Balls’ Bluff & Edwards Ferry, October 21-22, 1861. I’ve written before about the huge impact of this little battle, and last year, I was lucky enough to ( Read more... )