For our latest newsstand-only special issue, The Civil War Almanac, we asked a panel of Civil War historians—J. Matthew Gallman, Matthew C. Hulbert, James Marten, and Amy Murrell Taylor—for their opinions on a variety of popular topics, including the war’s most overrated and underratred commanders, top turning points, most influential women, and best depictions on film. Space constraints prevented us from including their answers to one of the questions we posed: What are the 10 best Civil War books ever published (nonfiction or fiction)? Below are their responses.
You are reading: Best civil war books
You are reading: Best civil war books
You are reading: Best civil war books
j. matthew gallman:
1. Memoir. Ulysses S. Grant, The Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant (1885). Often described as the best book by a U.S. President and the best memoir of the Civil War. (Confederate artillerist Porter Alexander’s memoir would be a close second.)
2. lincoln. i’m a big fan of eric foner’s the fiery trial: abraham lincoln and american slavery (2010). For more traditional Lincoln biographies, I think the best of a very long shelf of titles are the one-volume biographies of David Donald and Richard Carwardine.
3. lincoln and civil liberties. mark e. Neely Jr., Liberty’s Destiny: Abraham Lincoln and Civil Liberties (Oxford University Press). this is not really a lincoln book but a complex analysis of civil liberties in times of war. neely is another author who could have multiple titles on my list.
4. war novel. Louisa May Alcott, Hospital Sketches (1863). Alcott’s wonderful autobiographical novel about her experiences as a wartime nurse. Alcott’s Little Women (1868) is a close second.
5. study of the soldier. james mcpherson, for the cause and the comrades: why men fought in the civil war (1997). mcpherson could have many volumes on this list, including battle cry of freedom. his study of soldiers’ motivations is deeply researched and theoretically sophisticated.
6. women and war. Draw Gilpin Faust’s Mothers of Invention: Women of the Slave South in the American Civil War (1996) is my pick for another wonderfully insightful subfield.
7. African-American soldiers. Joseph T. Glatthaar, Forged in Battle: The Civil War Alliance of Black Soldiers and White Officers (1990). This is now a huge subfield, but Glaatthaar’s book is still foundational as a study of both the men of the U.S.C.T. and their white officers.
8. escape narrative. William and Ellen Craft, Running a Thousand Miles for Liberty (1860). this is my favorite in a genre full of powerful stories. William and Ellen Craft escaped slavery when Ellen posed as a free black man, and William pretended to be his slave.
9. wartime politics. I’m working on a study of wartime democrats. With that in mind, I give Jean H a nod. Baker, Party Affairs: The Political Culture of Northern Democrats in the Mid-Nineteenth Century (1983). (Although Joel Sibey’s 1977 study of wartime Democrats also deserves consideration.)
10. modern novel. I am a great admirer of e.l. Doctorow’s the march: a novel (2006), a fictionalized account of the events that occurred during Sherman’s march to the sea. march (2005), by geraldine brooks, with a similar title and wildly different, is also wonderful.
j. Matthew Gallman is a professor of history at the University of Florida. His most recent book, Defining Duty in the Civil War: Personal Choice, Popular Culture, and the Union Home Front (2105), won the Bobbie and John Nau Book Award in Civil War Era History American.
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Matthew C. hulberto:
1. james mcpherson, battle cry of freedom (1988)
I have defined “best” here as the books that have had the greatest combined influence on how historians write about the Civil War and how the American public has learned about, understood, and remembered the conflict. This in mind, as far and away the best-known overview of the Civil War for nearly 30 years, McPherson’s Pulitzer-winning book has been used in untold classrooms to introduce Americans to their national bloodletting. For the general public, Battle Cry and its author have become synonymous with Civil War history._cover.jpg)
2. bell i. wiley, the life of johnny reb (1943) & the life of billy yank (1952)
yes, I’m cheating with a double selection, but these two books are more or less inseparable. Wiley pretty much invented social history in the context of Civil War soldiers. johnny reb will celebrate his diamond anniversary in 2018 and remains the often go-to source for information on the daily lives and routines of Confederate soldiers.
3. your. grant, personal memoirs of ulysses s. concession (1885)
Many historians hold that Grant was the most important military figure of the entire Civil War. his memoir, completed just days before he succumbed to throat cancer, provides an eye-opening look at the victorious general and his vision of war. For my money, it is the most important memoir written by any participant in the civil war and provides invaluable insight into not only the war, but also how the man who won it wanted both himself and the conflict to be remembered.
4. Edward Pollard, The Lost Cause (1866)
pollard, a virginia newspaper publisher and ardent confederate sympathizer, coined the term “lost cause” and began the memorial process of disentangling southern rank-and-file soldiers from the stigma of defeat and the socioeconomic ramifications of emancipation. his work is essentially the original foundation of the lost cause movement and produced many of the states’ rights/slavery/secession talking points still prevalent today (and which were refined in pollard’s 1868 follow-up the lost cause recovered).
5. david blight, race and meeting (2001)
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Although much more recent than some of the other titles listed, race and gathering is the seminal text in civil war memory studies, a subfield that has exploded in popularity in recent years. Two decades. Whether they agree with his thesis in whole, in part, or at all, all subsequent scholars of social memory and war have necessarily responded to blight’s thesis.
6. Web. du bois, black reconstruction in america (1935)
Although not considered the definitive title on reconstruction, du bois’s black reconstruction is ranked here ahead of foner’s reconstruction (which is considered by many to be the seminal work on the subject) because it was written and published at a time when political and historiographical interests were much more important. du bois brought black characters to the forefront of Reconstruction history and responded forcefully to claims school historians’ accounts, which were largely based on contemporary views of white supremacy. In many ways, he built a launching pad for future Reconstruction historians, including earlier ones.
7. eric foner, reconstruction (1988)
as mentioned above, foner’s reconstruction has been considered by almost everyone to be the essential book on reconstruction for nearly three decades. like blight’s race and rally, it is the work to which all scholars of the subject must respond in some way, whether they agree or disagree with the above conclusions.
8. bruce catton, a stillness in appomattox (1953)
Until Ken Burns’ The Civil War transformed Shelby Foote into the best-known popular historian of the Civil War, Catton had held that undisputed title for decades. Stillness is probably Catton’s best-known title (it took home a Pulitzer Prize), but it’s worth noting that his collective corpus of work has inspired untold Americans from multiple generations—including many professional historians—to study the Civil War.
9. drew gilpin faust, this republic of suffering (2008)
For both historians and general readers, Faust captured the Civil War (and, more importantly, everything it destroyed) in relatable humanistic terms. The first fact everyone learns about the civil war is who won; the second is how many men were killed. this is the seminal work on death and how it was understood, confronted and reimagined by the generation that actually fought the war.
10. Douglas Southall Freeman, Lee’s Lieutenants (1942-1944)
Despite his association with commemorating lost causes, Freeman was a pioneer in Civil War military history. Unlike Wiley, who focused on the common soldier, Freeman analyzed the Army of Northern Virginia and its chain of command from the top down, shedding fascinating light on how the Army worked, moved, and fought as a hierarchical unit.
Matthew C. hulbert teaches american history at texas a&m university-kingsville. He is the author of Guerrilla Memory Ghosts: How Civil War Bushwhackers Became Gunslingers in the American West (2016), which won the 2017 Wiley-Silver Award.
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james marta:
1. stewart o’nan, a prayer for the dying (1999)
Riveting novel of the gradual unravelling of a Civil War veteran turned town marshal—clearly suffering from PTSD—as a forest fire and a deadly epidemic threatens his small town in 1870s Wisconsin. War memory, horror, and a vivid portrayal of postwar life are all crowded into this brisk, 200-page book.
2. Geraldine Brooks, March (2005)
I’m a bit of a fan of novels that tell the hidden stories behind the famous ones, and this account of the harrowing experiences of the father who leaves his “little women” behind when he goes to be an army chaplain is a wonderful example of the gender. His experiences in battle, in a smuggling camp, in the hospital, and, well, I won’t spoil the most amazing thing he does, works not only as a civil war narrative in its own right, but as a way of providing texture. for the original text.
3. michael shaara, the killer angels (1974)
The classic Pulitzer Prize-winning novel still resonates, despite the many minor sequels and prequels to Son of Shaara that tarnished its legacy. Shaara’s strengths are his accessible dialogue and his John Keegan-esque ability to imagine men’s responses to war.
4. Tony Horwitz, Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War (1998)
a still, perhaps increasingly relevant, examination of civil war memory in the 20th century South. Horwitz’s pivot at the midpoint to cover a Kentucky murder trial leads into a serious discussion of race relations that makes for a book that’s not only an entertaining read, but an important one as well.
5. charles frazier, cold mountain (1997)
see my thoughts on the film version of this novel.
6. robert hicks, widow of the south (2005)
A war novel and a sequel novel (the opening chapters feature Franklin’s bloody and pointless battle), this sensitive portrayal of the ways in which death was the central experience of war, both for soldiers and for civilians, even long after the war. the fight ended. though infused with the dying and the dead, the novel is less sad or tragic than elegiac.
7. ernest j. Hopkins, ed., Ambrose Bierce’s Civil War Short Stories(1970)
There are many groupings of bierce war stories, but this edition brings them all together. A participant’s most penetrating portrait of the worst human qualities inspired by war: inconsistent loyalty, mindless courage, and unavoidable cruelty, with a touch of fantasy and a bit of magical realism.
8. David M. potter, the impending crisis, 1848-1861 (1977)
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Not really a Civil War book, but crucial to understanding all other Civil War books. I still assign this to graduate students as an example of historical writing at its best and for its deployment of the concept of irony to the sectional conflict.
9. bruce catton, army of the potomac trilogy (mr. lincoln’s army [1951], gloriy road [1952] and a stillness in appomattox [1953])
wonderful narratives with which modern readers can find deeper than expected analyzes of military and political events; I’m pretty sure these are the books that convinced me that studying history was the bomb.
10. harold keith, rifles for watie (1957)
a somewhat far-fetched story of a teenager who helps smuggle weapons to Cherokee Confederate General Booth Watie, but one of the first civil war books I read, and with insight into relatively uncharted theaters of war (at least in fiction). it also contains one of the earliest kissing scenes I’ve ever read and still remember fondly.
james marten is a professor of history at marquettte university. His most recent books are Sing Not War: The Lives of Union and Confederate Veterans in Gilded Age America (2011) and America’s Cape: James Tanner in War and Peace (2014).
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amy murrell taylor:
1. Web. dubois, black reconstruction (1935)
Every time I think I have discovered something new about Emancipation and Reconstruction, I open up this book and find out that DuBois already got there—back in 1935. A vast survey of the transition from slavery to freedom, the book anticipated what is now the conventional scholarly wisdom about the agency of African Americans in the immediate post-slavery period.
2. Geraldine Brooks, March (2005)
This reimagining of the little women marching family focuses on mr. marches as a union chaplain. the result is a powerful look at what happens when the idealism of a northern march meets the realities of war in the south. Brooks does an especially good job of exploring the tangled process of emancipation experienced and witnessed by March.
3. edward l. yesterdays, in the presence of my enemies (2003)
The first of two companion books to the monumental digital archive, the valley of the shadow (disclosure: I worked on that project a long time ago), gives us a “ground level” view of the war that feels like going back in time and experiencing it for ourselves. Ayers beautifully weaves together all the threads of daily life (political, economic, social) in two communities, never losing sight of the bigger picture of the war (even when its protagonists couldn’t always see it for themselves).
4. charles dew, apostles of disunity (2001)
is shorthand for a book on the civil war, but it packs a punch. Dew’s review of the secession commissioners’ work, and in particular, his exposition of their words and arguments, forever dispenses with the question of why the South seceded. no one can deny that it was about slavery after reading this book.
5. sam watkins, aytch company (1882)
My students are often surprised to see that a Civil War American had a sense of humor. But what makes Sam Watkins’ account of his time as a private in company. h, 1st tennessee infantry, through shiloh and chickamauga, most poignant is his determination to end his fellow memoirists’ romanticization of the 1880s and bring “real warfare” (the drilling, slaughtering, and the shots) to the books.
6. eric foner, the litmus test (2010)
possibly the best of many books on abraham lincoln and emancipation. Foner carefully guides readers through the president’s personal and political evolution on slavery, emancipation, and race, and in the process makes sense of what may seem, at first glance, puzzling inconsistencies in the president’s positions. president.
7. toni morrison, beloved (1987)
It’s not normally classified as a “civil war” book, but perhaps that’s because we haven’t paid enough attention to the ordeal of those who freed themselves in that era. Morrison’s novel offers an enormously powerful meditation on the haunting memories of slavery that lingered long after its destruction.
8. Catherine Clinton and Nina Silber, eds., Divided Houses: Gender and Civil War (1992)
a collection of groundbreaking essays exploring how gender shaped the beliefs and actions of Civil War Americans. few other books influenced my early development as a historian and changed my way of looking at the past as much as this one.
9. anger berlin and leslie s. Rowland, eds., Families and Freedom: A Documentary History of African-American Kinship in the Civil War Era (1997)
This volume in the master series, Freedom: A Documentary History of Emancipation, presents the words and writings of enslaved and recently freed people who have long lain inside dusty boxes in the national archives. . now readers can explore for themselves, through the eyes of those who became free, what it was like to experience emancipation during the civil war.
10. Nancy Disher Baird, ed., Josie Underwood’s Civil War Diary (2009)
We’re lucky to have a lot of vivid civil war storytellers, especially women, but I keep coming back to this one. Underwood’s spirited and intimate account of life in Bowling Green, Kentucky, reveals what it was like to be part of a prominent slave-owning family who sided with the union despite their opposition to Lincoln. It’s a tale of tangled loyalties and strained relationships in a divided border state, and there’s something about Josie’s voice that draws me back to her. (A second part of the diary was published in the register of the kentucky historical society in 2014).
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amy murrell taylor is an associate professor of history at the university of kentucky. Her latest work, Freedom in Conflict: Journeys Through Civil War Slave Refugee Camps, will be published in 2018.