Sunday, June 25, 2017

Booknotes: Miller Cornfield at Antietam

New Arrival:
Miller Cornfield at Antietam: The Civil War's Bloodiest Combat by Phillip Thomas Tucker (Arcadia Pub & The Hist Press, 2017).

The Miller Cornfield and the Sunken Road are perhaps the two most iconic places on the Antietam battlefield in Maryland. Throughout the morning hours of September 17, 1862, determined attacks and counterattacks swept back and forth across the Miller Cornfield, carpeting the entire area with casualties from both sides. Miller Cornfield at Antietam details this phase of the battle, with a special focus on the men and exploits of Hood's Texas Brigade, and to a somewhat lesser degree the Union army's Iron Brigade. A theme of the book is that the truly elite combat units from both sides were drawn from the western fringes of America, from the harsh Southwest borderland to the recently settled wilds of Wisconsin and Michigan.

2 comments:

  1. I'll definitely hold off on this one until seeing your assessment. The author has a very mixed track record IMHO. Of course, the title also looks like more publisher marketing spin/hyperbole. I'll wager that (just for one example) anybody at the Bloody Angle on May 12, 1864 would have taken issue with "The Civil War's Bloodiest Combat".

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  2. I knew this was going to happen.

    Commenters: Listen, I'm not a fan either and reasonable criticism is allowed, but anonymous/unsigned comments slamming authors or publishers are deleted.

    ReplyDelete

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