Friday, January 8, 2016

Booknotes: Gettysburg 1863—Seething Hell

New Arrival:

Gettysburg 1863—Seething Hell: The Epic Battle of the Civil War in the Soldiers' Own Words by Thomas R. Pero (Wild River Press, 2016).

At 6 lbs and 400+ 9x12 in. pages in landscape format, this is a huge book. It's also very attractive. The end result of three years of scouring public and private archives, Pero's book contains full transcriptions (as well as some images) of hundreds of letters and diary & journal entries written by around 200 Union and Confederate soldiers as they marched and fought through the Gettysburg Campaign. In addition to photographs, name, hometown, age, rank, and unit information is provided for each soldier writer. Modern park vistas and approximately 300 photographs taken during the 150th Anniversary reenactment are also incorporated into the book. There are four really nice color fold-out maps that pinpoint where each writer principally fought on the battlefield and, if applicable, where the soldier became a casualty. It looks like the official release date is still April '16 but the link above seems to indicate that copies are generally available today.

2 comments:

  1. I went to the publisher's site, and it provided a link for more information on the book. However, that link (www.newgettysburg.com), doesn't work. A bit of quick googling uncovered the actual link: www.newgettysburgbook.com. It doesn't look like there's much in the way of a preview of actual pages of the book, though.

    Joel Manuel
    Baton Rouge

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I noticed that dead link, too. Given how important presentation is to the book's appeal, they would do well to put up some sample pages (like you say).

      Delete

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