Book News: Upon the Fields of Battle

I recently received LSU's Fall-Winter catalog and reviewer checklist. I wish every publisher could do this online. It just makes things so much simpler for all involved. Anyway, one of the most intriguing titles that I put on my list is Upon the Fields of Battle: Essays on the Military History of America's Civil War from contributing editors Andrew S. Bledsoe and Andrew F. Lang (November 2018). Bledsoe tweeted out some hints about what topics their book might cover a while back, and I've been wanted to get a look at the table of contents ever since. Happily, it just turned up online and is copied below. The guys recruited a solid lineup.

Foreword: Gary W. Gallagher

I. Considerations

Military History and the American Civil War by Andrew S. Bledsoe and Andrew F. Lang

Rejuvenating Traditional Military History in the Current Age of Civil War Studies by Earl J. Hess

II. The Contested Battlefield

“I am Completely Checked by the Weather”: George B. McClellan, Weather, and the Peninsula Campaign by Kenneth W. Noe

“Such Then Is The Decision”: George Gordon Meade, the Expectations of Decisive Battle, and the Road to Williamsport by Jennifer M. Murray

“The Farce Was Complete”: Braxton Bragg, Field Orders, and the Language of Command at McLemore’s Cove by Andrew S. Bledsoe

The Looting and Bombardment of Fredericksburg: “Vile Spirits” or War Transformed?
by John J. Hennessy

Guerrilla Warfare as Social Stimulus by Brian D. McKnight

III. The Soldiers’ War

The Problem of American Exceptionalism: Military Occupation, Emancipation, and the Preservation of Union by Andrew F. Lang

“They Met Their Fate Without a Sigh”: An Analysis of Confederate Military Executions
by Kevin M. Levin

McClellan's Men: Union Army Democrats in 1864 by Keith Altavilla

The Hour That Lasted Fifty Years: The 107th Ohio and The Human Longitude of Gettysburg
by Brian Matthew Jordan

“His death may have lost the South her independence”: Albert Sidney Johnston and Civil War Memory by Robert L. Glaze