Booknotes III (February '12)

New Arrivals:

1. Freedom's Cap: The United States Capitol and the Coming of the Civil War by Guy Gugliotta (Hill and Wang, 2012).

Gugliotta is not the first writer to use the construction of the capitol dome in Washington as a literary metaphor for the state of the nation, but his own lengthy study concentrates on the efforts of three men, project advocate Jefferson Davis, lead engineer Montgomery Meigs, and architect Thomas Walter.

2. Military Strategy in the American Civil War edited by James I. Robertson, Jr. (Virginia  Sesquicentennial of the ACW Commission, 2012).

Volume 3 of a series of commission publications associated with their yearly "Signature Conference".  Previous books include Race, Slavery, and the Civil War: The Tough Stuff of American History and Memory, edited by James O. Horton from the 2010 conference, and 2009's America on the Eve of the Civil War, edited by Edward L. Ayers and Carolyn R. Martin.