Booknotes: "The Civil War, Vol. 1: The 3D Experience"

New Arrival:
• The Civil War, Vol. 1: The 3D Experience by Ingo Bauernfeind (Bauernfeind Press, 2018).

3-D viewing was popular during the Civil War period using stereograph cards consisting of side-by-side photographic images that were examined through a special device. Ingo Bauernfeind's The Civil War, Vol. 1: The 3D Experience uses the process much more familiar to modern audiences, one that converts photographic images into anaglyphs that are in turn viewed through glasses with red and blue lenses.

Bauernfeind's book is an 8" x 11" paperback organized around a timeline of selected Civil War events from Lincoln's election through the end of the war. When opened, the left side typically contains one or two of those events (with a 'regular' photograph attached to each along with some brief descriptive text). Opposite to that, on the right side, is a nearly full-page anaglyph (also captioned) viewable through the 3D glasses provided with the book. It looks like there are around 90 in number. Most of the 3D images are military in nature depicting camp scenes, fortifications, batteries, ships, battlefield landscapes and casualties, military hospitals, field burial sites, and more.

The author's introduction briefly discusses Civil War photography and the development of 3D imagery. NPS Chief Historian Robert Sutton writes the preface and is additionally interviewed inside  about the Sesquicentennial as well as the Civil War in general (the Q&A is placed at the end of the book).

Although the distributor lists it as a 2018 title (so I went with that date), the volume is a "Sesquicentennial Edition" that only indicates a 2013 copyright date in the front matter.