OT: About books

[Adm.Lee]

Originally Posted by pmulcahy11b

USED to be legal -- the right of secession was, in fact, written into the US Constitution. A later amendment (after the Civil War) negated that right.

Really? Which one?

[Marc]

It's been nearly eight years since I started this thread!!!???

Well... I've make my homework. I started with the Ken Burns documentary (one of the best documentary works I’ve seen about history). It served to grow my interest in the subject, and I think this is the best things anyone can say about a documentary. I followed with MacPherson’s Battlecry for Freedom, a good book to understand the overall picture and the prewar years (I was specially ignorant about the vertiginous development of the United States in the two decades before the war). Then I take a rest from history essays with Gods and Generals and Killer Angels. After the novels, I find a series of lessons of the Yale University in Youtube. And, with an incredible fortune, I found the three volumes of Shelby Foote’s The Civil War: A Narrative on the shelves of a role-playing game / wargame shop in Barcelona, while I was looking for something else. This was two years ago. I’ve read the first two volumes and I’m reading the third right now. And I must say I’m enjoying it very much. Although the more literary style of Foote it’s a hard exam for my English skill level, the vividly way in which he explains every letter, conference, battle, travel and speech keeps me hooked to the reading.

So, even after eight years, thank you for your recommendations.

[The Dark]

If you want any books that focus more on equipment from the War to Preserve Slavery, my recommendations would be Earl J. Hess' The Rifled Musket in Civil War Combat: Reality and Myth (2008, University Press of Kansas) and Field Artillery Weapons of the Civil War (Olmstead, Hazlett, and Parks, 1983/2004, University of Illinois Press).

[swaghauler]

Originally Posted by Marc

It's been nearly eight years since I started this thread!!!???

Well... I've make my homework. I started with the Ken Burns documentary (one of the best documentary works I’ve seen about history). It served to grow my interest in the subject, and I think this is the best things anyone can say about a documentary. I followed with MacPherson’s Battlecry for Freedom, a good book to understand the overall picture and the prewar years (I was specially ignorant about the vertiginous development of the United States in the two decades before the war). Then I take a rest from history essays with Gods and Generals and Killer Angels. After the novels, I find a series of lessons of the Yale University in Youtube. And, with an incredible fortune, I found the three volumes of Shelby Foote’s The Civil War: A Narrative on the shelves of a role-playing game / wargame shop in Barcelona, while I was looking for something else. This was two years ago. I’ve read the first two volumes and I’m reading the third right now. And I must say I’m enjoying it very much. Although the more literary style of Foote it’s a hard exam for my English skill level, the vividly way in which he explains every letter, conference, battle, travel and speech keeps me hooked to the reading.

So, even after eight years, thank you for your recommendations.

Just so you know, Shelby Foote's Civil War: A Narrative is a 14 volume set. Volumes 7 and 8 (Gettysburg) are the hardest volumes to find. Amazon usually has the rest available.

[Marc]

Originally Posted by swaghauler

Just so you know, Shelby Foote's Civil War: A Narrative is a 14 volume set. Volumes 7 and 8 (Gettysburg) are the hardest volumes to find. Amazon usually has the rest available.

I don't know if it has been published in a lighter format, but I have three volumes (the last one with more than 1000 pages):

The Civil War: A Narrative. Vol 1: Fort Sumter to Perryville
The Civil War: A Narrative. Vol 2: Fredericksburg to Meridian
The Civil War: A Narrative. Vol 3: Red River to Appomattox

[swaghauler]

Originally Posted by Marc

I don't know if it has been published in a lighter format, but I have three volumes (the last one with more than 1000 pages):

The Civil War: A Narrative. Vol 1: Fort Sumter to Perryville
The Civil War: A Narrative. Vol 2: Fredericksburg to Meridian
The Civil War: A Narrative. Vol 3: Red River to Appomattox

That might be a "compiled" version. Each of my books is about 300 pages long. The first volume (which I just happen to have the copy of) is Secession to Fort Henry (ISBN 0-7835-0100-5). He wrote a couple of series so yours might be a different version.

[The Dark]

Originally Posted by swaghauler

That might be a "compiled" version. Each of my books is about 300 pages long. The first volume (which I just happen to have the copy of) is Secession to Fort Henry (ISBN 0-7835-0100-5). He wrote a couple of series so yours might be a different version.

The original Random House printing was three volumes. Time-Life re-released it as fourteen volumes. Essentially, vol. 1-4 of Time-Life are the first Random House, 5-9 are the second book, and 10-14 are the third book.

Edit: Also, Random House did a 2005 printing in nine volumes, splitting each of the original books into three.

[Cdnwolf]

Anything by Bruce Catton is highly recommended. Still can get copies on Amazon quite cheap.

Bruce Catton is still the dean of American military historians and the Civil War. He tells his story with wit, verve, accuracy, and the feeling of having been there. Unfortunately, like other great American historians who have passed on, such as John R. Elting, Frederick P. Todd, H. Charles McBarron, and Anne Brown, we won't see his like again.
In this marvelous first volume of his trilogy of the great, luckless, and hard-used Army of the Potomac, Catton tells the story of an army in search of a commander that can win with it. After the first botched attempt at First Bull Run, the army gets a commander who knows how to organize and train them, Goerge McClellan. What he cannot do, however, is lead them in combat. McClellan doesn't have the killer instinct of a true independent commander, nor does he have the requisite moral character to send the army into the fire, accept the losses needed to win, and be done with it. What he condemns his beloved army to is three years of defeats and heavy losses, punctuated by the few glorious moments, such as Gettysburg, where, despite the deficiencies of its many commanders, it fights on until final victory.
This volume tells of the growing and training of the Army of the Potomac, the heartbreak of the Peninsular Campaign, and the thrown away opportunity at Second Bull Run. We meet famous units, such as the 5th New Hampshire, the immortal Iron Brigade of western regiments, the Irish Brigade under such regimental and brigade commanders as John Gibbon, Israel Richardson, Francis Barlow, Phil Kearney, and Grimes Davis.
Grimly enduring, faithful to the Republic, stolid in the defense and gallant in the attack, the Army of the Potomac, repeatedly defeated and badly led at the army level, comes back time and again to face its foe.

[Raellus]

Originally Posted by Marc

I’ve read the first two volumes and I’m reading the third right now. And I must say I’m enjoying it very much. Although the more literary style of Foote it’s a hard exam for my English skill level, the vividly way in which he explains every letter, conference, battle, travel and speech keeps me hooked to the reading.

Hello Marc! What a coincidence! I too just started Vol. 3, albeit after a visit to Gettysburg this summer. My goal is to finish it this summer. As soon as I got back to Arizona from the battlefield, I reread Killer Angels and Foote's chapter on the campaign (which is also published as a stand-alone book entitled The Stars in Their Courses) in Vol 2 of his narrative history of the war.

If you liked McPherson's Battle Cry... (it's the best single volume history of the war and its origins out there, IMO), he's written several other works about campaigns and battles of the Civil War. I received his book about the naval side of the Civil War a couple of years ago but haven't read it yet.