NF Featured Top Civil War Books of All Time Voting Thread - VOTE NOW!

Non-Fiction
Rated all that I have read. I have some of the books listed but havw
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Are you ready to Rumble!​

By now I'm sure almost everyone (except for Steve who is officially barred from looking at the new Bookshop, yeah I'm looking at you Steve!) has seen the brand new:

But.... I've got a problem. I just created a new category today called Must Read Books and I'm not convinced that I picked the right books. Maybe I did, maybe I didn't. I'm going to let you decide which books get to stay, and which books must go!

What I'm going to do is list each book, one book per post below, and I want you to do one of two things to vote for each post...
  • Click LIKE if you Want the Book to Stay in the List
  • Click DISLIKE if you want the Book to Leave the list
Any other reactions will be ignored!

Hover your MOUSE over the Like Link and you can Choose the Blue LIKE or Red DISLIKE!
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Once I've posted every book I will open the thread for discussion, and you can tell me what books I forgot that need to be added to the Bookshop List!

So that's it! In no particular order, here are the books to vote on:
Rated all that I have read. I have some of the books listed but have not read them all.
 
In addition to many of the great books already listed, I'm especially drawn to primary sources/memoirs of all kinds. One that has stuck with me, and that I learned a great deal from was William Watson's Life in the Confederate Army: Being the Observations and Experiences of an Alien in the South during the American Civil War (1887). Despite Federal sympathies, Watson ended up fighting for the South. But his book is especially interesting for cultural context. A native Scot living in Baton Rouge in the lead up to war, his detailed record of local debates and arguments about secession, slavery, etc. is illuminating, and his shrewd and nuanced 'outsider' analysis is worth setting alongside more simplistic partisan narratives.
 
Should this Book be a Part of the Must Read Books Category?
Click LIKE to Keep - DISLIKE to Leave - VOTE NOW!

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The Gettysburg Campaign: A Study in Command
by Edwin B. Coddington
Three books on Gettysburg, but none on the Vicksburg and Atlanta Campaigns doesn't seem fair. Although I have not read them, these two received favorable reviews:

Atlanta 1864: Last Chance for the Confederacy
Vicksburg, the Campaign that Opened the Mississippi

(I can't intelligently vote on books that I have not read.)
 
Hugh Thomas, the late Mr. Thomas, wrote a book on The Slave Trade, Simon and Schuster 1997. This explains how England became complicit in the destablization of Western African, and the American colonies became addicted to slavery. And how a social movement took hold to end the slave trade.
 
2012 University of North Carolina Press, James McPherson, War on the Waters. A very easy once through on the 2nd main reason the US won the Civil War.
 
James Oakes, Freedom National, W.W. Norton and Co. 2013 explains how something we take for granted, was developed one step at a time. It also may explain why Reconstruction faded so quickly. Separation, not emancipation, was the main issue of the Civil War. Good thread. :D
 
Hugh Thomas, the late Mr. Thomas, wrote a book on The Slave Trade, Simon and Schuster 1997. This explains how England became complicit in the destablization of Western African, and the American colonies became addicted to slavery. And how a social movement took hold to end the slave trade.
Read it twice, but it deserves to be read again.
 
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Allegiance: Fort Sumter, Charleston, and the Beginning of the Civil War by David Detzer
Conf. in the Attic is more pop culture than CW
Conf. in the Attic makes it seem like you have to be filthy all the time. To be historically correct, one ought to research the time you are representing and see if the group had recently bathed or had new uniforms, etc.
 
Killing Lincoln by Bill O'Reilly and Martin Dugard
I didn't want to read this book because of its title, but it is well-written, engrossing, and full of interesting detail. There are a few inaccuracies.
 
I honestly think the two books everyone should read to fully understand Gettysburg are Plenty of Blame to Go Around and One Continuous Fight by @Eric Wittenberg

And Wiley Sword? Bah humbug. Why not The Lost Papers of Confederate General John Bell Hood by Stephen Hood? That was an astounding discovery which changed the entire false premise put forth by Sword. We have some real personal narratives with enough bias to go around--let's leave out pure manufactured marlarkey masquerading at history.

@EricAJacobson For Cause and For Country: A Study of the Affair at Spring Hill and the Battle of Franklin. That book alone had a huge influence on both the historical view of Franklin AND his scholarship and efforts changed Franklin and the battlefield into one of the must-see Civil War locations. (If you don't believe me, just visit).
 
I honestly think the two books everyone should read to fully understand Gettysburg are Plenty of Blame to Go Around and One Continuous Fight by @Eric Wittenberg

And Wiley Sword? Bah humbug. Why not The Lost Papers of Confederate General John Bell Hood by Stephen Hood? That was an astounding discovery which changed the entire false premise put forth by Sword. We have some real personal narratives with enough bias to go around--let's leave out pure manufactured marlarkey masquerading at history.

@EricAJacobson For Cause and For Country: A Study of the Affair at Spring Hill and the Battle of Franklin. That book alone had a huge influence on both the historical view of Franklin AND his scholarship and efforts changed Franklin and the battlefield into one of the must-see Civil War locations. (If you don't believe me, just visit).

Eric squared.
 
Grant Wins the War by James R. Arnold. Great book on a campaign that is too often overlooked. In that vein, I would also suggest Champion Hill: Decisive Battle for Vicksburg by Timothy B. Smith.
 
Killing Lincoln by Bill O'Reilly and Martin Dugard
I didn't want to read this book because of its title, but it is well-written, engrossing, and full of interesting detail. There are a few inaccuracies.
Another book I didn't want to read: Manhunt: The 12-day Chase for Lincoln's Killer by James L. Swanson. Not as well-written as K.L.. Overlaps a lot, has some contradictions, and adds a great deal more detail. Different views help balance each other.
 
Specimen Days. Walt Whitman
Raising the White Flag of Surrender. David Silkenat
The Memory of the Civil War in American Culture. Fahs & Waugh
Editors Make War. Donald Reynolds
Causes Won, Lost, Forgotten. Gary Gallagher
Ken Burns The Civil War: Historians Respond. Robert Toplin
The Smell of Battle, The Taste of Siege. Mark Smith
Writing The Civil War. McPherson/Cooper
The Unwritten War. Daniel Aaron
The Mind of the South. Cash
Shenandoah Valley Campaign. Gary Gallagher
Shenandoah 1862. Cozzens
Thin Line of Freedom. Ed Ayers
Weirding The War. Stephen Berry
The Civil War in Popular Culture. Kreiser/Allred
Bruce Catton, anything.
 
Specimen Days. Walt Whitman
Raising the White Flag of Surrender. David Silkenat
The Memory of the Civil War in American Culture. Fahs & Waugh
Editors Make War. Donald Reynolds
Causes Won, Lost, Forgotten. Gary Gallagher
Ken Burns The Civil War: Historians Respond. Robert Toplin
The Smell of Battle, The Taste of Siege. Mark Smith
Writing The Civil War. McPherson/Cooper
The Unwritten War. Daniel Aaron
The Mind of the South. Cash
Shenandoah Valley Campaign. Gary Gallagher
Shenandoah 1862. Cozzens
Thin Line of Freedom. Ed Ayers
Weirding The War. Stephen Berry
The Civil War in Popular Culture. Kreiser/Allred
Bruce Catton, anything.
Forgot two: Diaries of both Hotchkiss and Strother! And Living Hell by Adams, plus Patriotic Gore by Wilson.
 
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I'll add another vote for American Brutus.

BATTLE/CAMPAIGN STUDIES
Donnybrook: The Battle of Bull Run, 1861 by David Detzer
Shenandoah 1862: Stonewall Jackson's Valley Campaign by Peter Cozzens
Perryville: This Grand Havoc of Battle by Kenneth W. Noe (which covers the entire Kentucky Campaign)
Return to Bull Run: The Campaign and Battle of Second Manassas by John J. Hennessy
No Better Place to Die: The Battle Of Stones River by Peter Cozzens
Plenty of Blame to Go Around: Jeb Stuart's Controversial Ride to Gettysburg by Eric J. Wittenberg
The Shipwreck of Their Hopes: The Battles for Chattanooga by Peter Cozzens
Decision In The West: The Atlanta Campaign Of 1864 by Albert E. Castel
Southern Storm: Sherman's March to the Sea by Noah Andre Trudeau

OTHER
The Impending Crisis: America Before the Civil War, 1848-1861 by David M. Potter
For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War by James M. McPherson
The Hard Hand of War: Union Military Policy Toward Southern Civilians, 1861-1865 by Mark Grimsley
 
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