NF The Civil War Monitor

Non-Fiction

vmicraig

Sergeant
Joined
Mar 12, 2018
Location
London, England
Not sure how many of you subscribe to this magazine... I had never heard of it before. I used some old airline miles points to subscribe and found it to be an incredibly interesting collection of short essays, stories and vignettes. This is the winter 2018 edition. I highly recommend it
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Not sure how many of you subscribe to this magazine... I had never heard of it before. I used some old airline miles points to subscribe and found it to be an incredibly interesting collection of short essays, stories and vignettes. This is the winter 2018 edition. I highly recommend itView attachment 214979

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I'm a subscriber. It's a fine magazine, but I still miss B&G.
 
I pick it up now and then. I don't have much faith in Civil War magazines anymore. I have subscribed to two that had been around a long time. Both are gone now, and I lost all the rest in a flood. I think it's a good magazine, but I'll stick to True West.
 
The publisher of the Monitor is my old friend Terry Johnston. I've known Terry for 20 years, but I really got to know him well back in the days when North & South magazine was still around. I was one of the owners of the company, and I had a seat on the company's board of directors, while Terry was the editor. We had a ton of interaction between company business and the fact that I was a very regular contributor to the magazine. I then helped Terry start the Monitor--I filed for and got his trademark, as one example.

Terry has a Ph.D. in history, so he's a serious scholar. My opinion is that he runs a first rate operation, with quality articles and a very nice presentation. You could do a whole lot worse.
 
I subscribe and I enjoy it very much. It is a quality magazine.

We're on an upswing in the quality of Civil War magazines. At first, there was only one magazine for the general public, Civil War Times Illustrated. When that first started it had quality articles from great historians. Then in the 1980s it started to take a nose dive and the good historians weren't in it, being replaced by freelance journalists for the most part, along with some enthusiasts, and the quality was bad. Blue & Gray came out and was pretty good. America's Civil War came out and it was another that featured mostly freelance journalists. Gettysburg Magazine has been a quality publication since its inception. For awhile, the Civil War Society published Civil War, which was their official magazine. It had a few good articles in it. IMO things took an upswing when North and South came out. It was a game changer. It featured high quality articles, good historians, and excellent maps. It forced the others to raise the level of their games. America's Civil War seems to me to have lured away their mapmaker, because they now have those excellent maps. Civil War Times is back up to having good articles with good historians, though it also has some freelancers as well. Civil War Monitor is a worthy addition with contributions from top historians and great features that cover a variety of interests in different aspects of the war. My sense is the upswing began with North and South. If it weren't for that quality publication, we may not have seen the increase in quality.
 
Al, you are correct that America's Civil War lured away David, the cartographer. I agree with you about North & South and its influence. It's a shame that the publisher was incompetent and that he alienated everyone who wrote for the magazine by not paying them. I could go on for a long time about it, but it's pointless. Suffice it to say that I, along with a bunch of others, including Gordon Rhea, got suckered by the publisher. I lost $20,000 when North & South tanked. It remains a very sore subject with me, which is why I have elected not to go on any further about it.

I very much view the Monitor as the worthy successor to North & South, but with substantially better business practices and an honest publisher.
 
Eric, IMO whatever influence you had in North and South was important in our seeing the higher quality in Civil War magazines today, and as we see you continue to have an influence with America's Civil War. I know Andy is having an influence on Civil War Monitor, and we're all better off for the influence you two and others are having.
 
Eric, IMO whatever influence you had in North and South was important in our seeing the higher quality in Civil War magazines today, and as we see you continue to have an influence with America's Civil War. I know Andy is having an influence on Civil War Monitor, and we're all better off for the influence you two and others are having.
Amen, Al.
 
Eric, IMO whatever influence you had in North and South was important in our seeing the higher quality in Civil War magazines today, and as we see you continue to have an influence with America's Civil War. I know Andy is having an influence on Civil War Monitor, and we're all better off for the influence you two and others are having.

Thank you, Al. I appreciate that.

I joined the editorial board of Gettysburg Magazine this year, so I will definitely have some influence there.
 
I knew about, but forgot, that one!

For once I'm a bit ahead of the curve. I remembered when Eric said he was going to be on the board and that influenced me to subscribe to Gettysburg Magazine. I'm 100% positive this will be the only time in my life I'm ahead of you A!
 
This issue of Monitor was my first as a subscriber as well. A friend was selling magazine subscriptions to support her son's baseball team. I immediately went looking to see if they had an CW titles, and Monitor was the only one they had. Really enjoyed the first issue and read it cover to cover
 
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