Booknotes V (Mar '13)

New Arrivals:

1. Gettysburg: The Graphic History of America's Most Famous Battle and the Turning Point of The Civil War by Wayne Vansant (Zenith Pr, 2013).

A full color history of the battle and aftermath, formatted in the popular graphic novel style.

2. A Confederate Englishman: The Civil War Letters of Henry Wemyss Feilden edited by W. Eric Emerson and Karen Stokes (USC Pr, 2013).

Feilden was an English officer who resigned and traveled to Charleston, SC with the intent of obtaining a staff position in the Confederate army. He joined Beauregard's military family and even married a local girl, his letters to her comprising A Confederate Englishman. The collected writings, annotated by Emerson and Stokes, recounts his experiences in the department during the war as well as reminiscences penned in the early twentieth century.

3. The Civil War: The Third Year Told by Those Who Lived It edited by Brooks D. Simpson (Library of America, 2013).

This is the third (but the first I've seen) of a four volume set of contemporary Civil War writings. Vol. 3 covers January 1863 to March 1864 and "brings together more than 140 contemporary letters, diary entries, speeches, articles, messages, and poems by more than eighty participants and observers." Also, from the publisher description: "Each volume features a detailed chronology of events, biographical notes about the writers, textual and explanatory notes, and original hand-drawn endpaper maps by expert Civil War cartographer Earl McElfresh".