Sunday, May 10, 2015

FW catalogs

As usual, with the approach of summer the first of the Fall-Winter catalogs dribble out. Some of these titles have been mentioned before on the site.

Kent State:
One Nation Divided by Slavery: Remembering the American Revolution While Marching toward the Civil War by Michael F. Conlin.
Border Wars: The Civil War in Tennessee and Kentucky edited by Kent T. Dollar, Larry H. Whiteaker, and W. Calvin Dickinson.
“My Greatest Quarrel with Fortune” : Major General Lew Wallace in the West, 1861–1862 by Charles G. Beemer.
Conspicuous Gallantry: The Civil War and Reconstruction Letters of James W. King, 11th Michigan Volunteer Infantry edited by Eric R. Faust.
Citizens and Communities: Civil War History Readers, Volume 4 edited by J. Matthew Gallman.

KSUP puts out a yearly rather than seasonal catalog and most of their 2015 Civil War catalog is winter month weighted. Border Wars is a companion to the excellent Sister States, Enemy States edited by the same crew but different publisher. Gail Stephens's Shadow of Shiloh offered a very fine history of Wallace's entire military career but Beemer focuses specifically on the general's early service in the western theater.

Nebraska & Potomac:
The Civil War and Reconstruction in Indian Territory edited by Bradley R. Clampitt.

This set of essays examines both military and home fronts, with some attention paid to the even more neglected western part of the territory.

Kentucky:
Lincoln’s Final Hours: Conspiracy, Terror, and the Assassination of America’s Greatest President by Kathryn Canavan.

There's already plenty out there but I was expecting a bigger flood of assassination books this year.

LSU:
Damn Yankees! Demonization and Defiance in the Confederate South by George C. Rable.
Citizen-Officers: The Union and Confederate Volunteer Junior Officer Corps in the American Civil War by Andrew S. Bledsoe.

Each side demonized the other with abandon but Rable's contribution to Civil War cultural studies closely focuses on anti-Union rhetoric in speech and on the written page. Bledsoe analyzes "wartime writings, post-war reminiscences, company and regimental papers, census records, and demographic data" in order to construct the most comprehensive study yet of the Civil War company officer.

North Carolina:
The World the Civil War Made edited by Gregory P. Downs and Kate Masur.
Cold Harbor to the Crater: The End of the Overland Campaign edited by Gary W. Gallagher and Caroline E. Janney.
Tales from the Haunted South: Dark Tourism and Memories of Slavery from the Civil War Era by Tiya Miles.

Downs and Masur's book is"(a)n interregional, national history that challenges traditional
boundaries of post-Civil War history
" and Gallagher and Janney revive the Military Campaigns of the Civil War series after an extended dormancy. I despise the viral spread of television ghost hunter shows not because they're a part of a "troubling" popular phenomenon but because they're insultingly stupid. Miles takes issue with Old South "ghost tours" for not being up on the latest scholarship.

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