Booknotes: The Kentucky Campaign of 1862 and Battle of Perryville (2 Vols)

New Arrival:
• The Kentucky Campaign of 1862 and Battle of Perryville (Volumes I and II) by Kenneth A. Hafendorfer (KH Press-author, 2017).

For many years now I've been anticipating a satisfactory campaign history replacement for James Lee McDonough's War In Kentucky: Shiloh To Perryville (1994), a book that's held its place as the standard work on the 1862 Kentucky Campaign both because it still provides readers with an adequate overview but also because the field lacks contenders. Physician by training and historian by avocation, the late Kenneth Hafendorfer published over a nearly three-decade period a number of Kentucky Civil War titles (several of which directly addressed the 1862 campaign): Perryville: Battle for Kentucky (which underwent multiple improved incarnations in the years following the publication of the rougher 1981 first edition), They Died by Twos and Tens: The Confederate Cavalry in the Kentucky Campaign of 1862 (1995), Nathan Bedford Forrest - The Distant Storm: The Murfreesboro Raid of July 13, 1862 (1997), Mill Springs: Campaign and Battle of Mill Springs, Kentucky (2001), The Battle of Wild Cat Mountain: Kentucky, October 21, 1861 (2003), and Battle of Richmond, Kentucky - August 30, 1862 (2008).

Hafendorfer's massive final project, which one might consider his magnus opus, was published in September 2017 shortly before his passing. A two-volume set [The Kentucky Campaign Of 1862 and Battle of Perryville, Vol I: Tupelo to Perryville and Vol II: Perryville to Knoxville], the books address as a whole the summer heartland campaigns in the West at what looks to be unprecedented breadth and detail. Even though this is the kind of unobtainable review candidate that I set up the CWBA book fund to help acquire for the site, I was initially held back by the high premium price and general lack of information. Then reader and patron Curtis T. emailed me some photos and bibliographic details. That hooked me even though picking up the set blew through the remaining book fund balance and far beyond!

Including the index the set runs 1,390 pages in total length. I didn't count them myself but according to Curtis's report there are 174 maps(!) as well. The pair is unbalanced in terms of relative girth, which Vol. II at least 50% thicker than Vol. I. The set covers theater-wide Union and Confederate operations during the summer of 1862, recounting a multitude of concurrent movements conducted over parts of six states (Kentucky, Tennessee, N. Mississippi, N. Alabama, NW Georgia, and SW Virginia). Included are those military events that took place between the Confederate evacuation and Union occupation of Corinth at the end of May/beginning of June 1862 and the conclusion of Bragg's Kentucky Campaign in late October. If you've read the author's earlier works (my personal favorites are Mill Springs and Wild Cat Mountain) you'll see in these two books a similar presentation style and traditional military focused narrative.

Most of Hafendorfer's out of print works still command pretty hefty prices on the secondary market. This print run is even smaller than those. The set is limited to only 108 numbered copies, with the first eight being full-leather special editions and the rest very sturdy hardcovers sporting a brand of binding and board robustness very little seen anymore. It was intended that all copies would be signed by the author but his death at the time of publication precluded that. If you're a serious player for this sort of thing, I would get it sooner rather than later. It's probably fair to say that the books will be nearly unobtainable down the line.