Booknotes: "The Bloody Fifth"

New Arrival:
• "The Bloody Fifth" The 5th Texas Infantry Regiment, Hood's Texas Brigade, Army of Northern Virginia: Volume 1: Secession to the Suffolk Campaign by John F. Schmutz (Savas Beatie, 2016).

Taking advantage of the industry's mid-summer lull, this publisher is grabbing the spotlight and releasing new titles at a fairly furious pace. I was impressed with John Schmutz's Crater battle history from a short while ago and he's remaining on the Virginia front with his first regimental study "The Bloody Fifth". The first two chapters cover the 5th Texas's organization and its first winter in the field. The rest of the book explores the regiment's role in the Peninsula, Second Bull Run, Maryland, Fredericksburg, and Suffolk campaigns. There's the usual array of fine battle maps and the publisher's commitment to using footnotes rather than endnotes. The bibliography is saved for the second volume, so there's no easy way to assess at a glance how many soldier letters, diaries, and memoirs were found. According to the description, the "study is based upon years of archival battlefield research that uncovered hundreds of primary sources, many never before used". The first appendix consists of organizational profiles of each company while the second offers a lengthy series of biographical sketches (some quite substantial) of individuals, men and women, in some way associated with the unit.