My latest completed work is a volume of Civil War history: NiNi Harris's A Most Unsettled State. (The link is to an independent St. Louis bookstore. The book is also available from Amazon.) I'm not sure whether Harris should be referred to as the editor or the author, because the book is essentially a selection of primary sources from ( Read more... )

      Down in Savannah we picked up Images of America: Historic Bonaventure Cemetery, by Amie Marie Wilson and Mandi Dale Johnson. This is the cemetery that was the central image of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. It's a very Romantic place, and well worth the visit. We spent a couple of hours there, and could happily have spent a couple ( Read more... )

        So when I was down in Savannah recently, the History Museum in the old train station reminded me of a memoir I'd been meaning to read: Reminiscences of My Life in Camp with the 33rd U.S. Colored Troops, Late 1st South Carolina Volunteers, by Susie King Taylor. Taylor was a washerwoman with the regiment, the same regiment that Thomas ( Read more... )

         Catherine the Great is Robert K. Massie's most recent historical account, in a distinguished line of biographies and narrative histories. The subtitle, Portrait of a Woman, hints at the somewhat-more-gossipy nature of this volume, compared to his other works. It is, nonetheless, a fascinating window into the life of the courts of the 18th ( Read more... )

         I was given (thank you, Chris) a copy of Medieval Seafarers of India, by Lakshmi Subramanian, and since it's a subject I'm interested in it made its way quickly to the top of the pile.
         This is a 152-page exploration of a vast subject, very much a secondary source, and the title is misleading. I would guess that more than half ( Read more... )

         George B. Abdill's Civil War Railroads: A Pictorial Story of the War between the States, 1861-1865 has been around 1961, and I'd consulted it in libraries before. The University of Indiana Press brought it out again, and I finally gave in and purchased it.
        Well, it's a classic. Abdill collected as many photographs of Civil War ( Read more... )

         I'm a big fan of David McCullough, who grew up in my current neighborhood, so it was inevitable that I'd read The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris even though I'm more than a little tired of the whole Americans-in-Paris thing. At least this limits itself to the 1800s. Specifically it covers 1830-1900.
         This is one I'm glad to ( Read more... )

    Yes, you can tell I've been buried in student manuscripts. It's the second half of September and I'm writing about books I finished in August. C'est triste.
    Pittsburgh's Mansions, is one of those Images of America entries, this one by Melanie Linn Gutowski. I used to work with Melanie in the Renaissance & Baroque Society office, so you ( Read more... )

         Glory Road, the second volume of Bruce Catton's Army of the Potomac Trilogy covers the period from the replacement of McClellan to the delivery of the Gettysburg Address. This means it covers Burnside's disasters (including the Mud March), Hooker's inability to capitalize on success, and Meade's impossible task: taking over a dispersed ( Read more... )

         I'm beginning to consider having a shelf devoted to Fruit Loop Books from the 1800s, and on it would have to be Life of the Empress Josephine, by Cecil B. Hartley (though his name isn't listed in this 1870 Porter & Coates edition). Also on the shelf would be Ignatius Donnelly's Ragnarök, the Age of Fire and Gravel, Captain Willard Glazier ( Read more... )