Asking for Civil War books recommendations

For Chickamauga, there's two

Peter Cozzens This Terrible Sound
and
David A. Powell's trilogy on Chickamauga (I'd link it but I've heard that your Amazon account can be hacked by smarties on this site).

Both are very good. Cozzens sums up the battle nicely in one volume, Powell digs deep. There's also Glenn Tucker's Chickamauga and Stephen Woodworth's Six Armies in Tennessee.

Two great series on the overland Campaign are Gordon C. Rhea's Battle of the Wilderness and succeeding volumes on Spotsylvania, the North Anna River and Cold Harbor. Four in all. And if you want a single volume, I'd go with Noah Andre Trudeau's Bloody Roads South. Same principle and the Chickamauga books, just depends on how far you want to get into it.

All are on Amazon




Nothing's too good for the man who shot Liberty Valance.

Deeper than Shelby Foote, not as deep as Gordon Rhea's quadrilogy, although when I checked it out on Amazon it looked really interesting. Isn't Glenn Tucker a 60s-70s writer? I seem to recall reading some articles by him in old Civil War Times Illustrated mags from the '60s. That's not a knock on him, btw, only curiosity.

I read Catton many years ago and had a chance to pick up his AoP trilogy in a used book store and kick myself for passing it by. $7 for all 3 books.


Thanks for both of your suggestions.

Then I would go with Cozzens book on Chickamauga and Trudeau's on the Overland Campaign. Very readable with lots of good maps (a must for me in a battle book).

Isn't Glenn Tucker a 60s-70s writer?

Yeah, he was one of the writers who published during the CW Centennial. Most were dry as my ex-wife's cake but Tucker's books were very interesting.

Bruce Catton is part of the reason for my CW fascination. When we were kids, my parents went to Gettysburg. Thought I'd be bored but it knocked my socks off. In a gift shop, they bought me The American Heritage Civil War book. Catton wrote the text and then I had to read everything of his. There may be better historical authors, but there is none, in any field, who was more readable than Bruce Catton. Shelby Foote is close. I always love Foote's stuff on the smaller battles. His chapters on Mobile Bay, the Red River Campaign, the US naval attack on Charleston are great, better than Gettysburg or Shiloh.


Nothing's too good for the man who shot Liberty Valance.

Nearly every book about Grant or the Overland Campaign will mention that after the Battle of the Wilderness was over, Grant nearly had a nervous breakdown. He threw himself on his cot and wept like a baby with a rash. Grant Takes Command was the first book that I came across that didn't mention the breakdown. Catton's footnote says that the incident was only found in James Wilson's memoirs. Wilson was nowhere near HQ at the end of the battle and had an axe to grind with Ulysses over an ambassadorial appointment. Cyrus Comstock, Horace Porter and Theodore Lyman (no friend of Grant's) never mentioned it.

Just proves that Catton was a beast on his research.



Nothing's too good for the man who shot Liberty Valance.

Thanks to all of you. I was 10 when the CW centennial started, and my dad was pleasantly shocked when I asked for a subscription to Civil War Times (which a few months later became CTW Illustrated) for a Christmas present. My great-several-times uncle was a member of an Illinois cavalry unit (most of my people immigrated after the CW ended except for an Indian great-grandmother) who had the...uh, distinction of having been captured by Forrest twice, or so I was told, which probably made me have an interest in the CW.

I just read "Black Flag", about the fighting on the KS-MO fighting; I can't recommend it as it reads like a modern "journalists" article full of twitter remarks without much explanation or context. Catton's books are available; I had them all years ago but between time, multiple moves, etc... you know how it goes, things get loaned/not returned, lost, damaged...

Thanks for all your references. In Foote I'm currently at Gettysburg ("Stars in Their Courses"), so I'm rereading Sear's "Gettysburg" along with "Longstreet's Memoirs."

Gen. John Bell Hood's "Attack and Retreat" is a good read.
He was at Gettyburg.

--Every man's death diminishes me...because I am involved in mankind--