Booknotes III (January '10 )

New additions this month:

1. The Battle of Port Royal by Michael D. Coker (The History Press, 2009).

2. The Battle of Okolona: Defending the Mississippi Prairie by Brandon H. Beck (The History Press, 2009).

Neither of the above pair of battles has received a modern book length treatment prior to these, I believe.

3. Federal Laws of the Reconstruction: Principal Congressional Acts and Resolutions, Presidential Proclamations, Speeches and Orders, and Other Legislative and Military Documents, 1862-1875 by Frederick A. Hosen (McFarland, 2009).

Save the very brief introduction, this book is entirely a documentary collection with no additional commentary. From the publisher description:

"This collection of documents (primarily statutes and presidential proclamations), provide an important research tool that gives a unique sense of the reconstruction process. Included are 37 acts of congress, 44 presidential proclamations, eight congressional resolutions, one inaugural speech, one military field order, one presidential order, and two war department circulars, all reproduced in their entirety and arranged chronologically".

4. Bullets and Steel: The Fight for the Great Kanawha Valley, 1861-1865 by Richard Andre, Stan Cohen, and William D. Wintz (Pictorial Histories, 1995).

5. Seven Months in the Rebel States During the North American War, 1863 by Justus Scheibert, trans. by Joseph C. Hayes, edited by William Stanley Hoole (Univ. of Alabama Press, 2009).

The Scheibert memoir is the first volume of Alabama's southern primary source material series Seeing The Elephant. It looks like the next one will be Recollections of War Times By An Old Veteran while under Stonewall Jackson and Lieutenant General James Longstreet by William A. McClendon, edited by Keith S. Bohannon.