Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Booknotes IV (June '10)

New Arrivals:

1. The Two Civil War Battles of Newtonia by Larry Wood (The History Press, 2010).

The book concentrates much more on the first battle (Sept. 30, 1862) than the second (Oct. 28, 1864), which is too bad given the even greater lack of coverage for the latter. Although notes are absent, there's a bibliography and 20 maps covering the battles at short intervals, detailing both terrain features and troop positions (at regimental scale). Even undocumented, it looks to be a must have for Civil War Missouri readers.

2. Receding Tide: Vicksburg and Gettysburg - The Campaigns That Changed the Civil War by Edwin C. Bearss and J. Parker Hills (National Geographic, 2010).

Here, Parker Hills constructs a narrative out of Bearss's tour transcripts, which I gather is a similar format to the earlier Fields of Honor, also published by NG. It's more Vicksburg than Gettysburg, which is proper and unsurprising.

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