Booknotes: Mississippi Civil War Monuments

New Arrival:
• Mississippi Civil War Monuments: An Illustrated Field Guide by Timothy S. Sedore (Quarry Books - Indiana UP, 2020).

According to the description to Timothy Sedore's Mississippi Civil War Monuments: An Illustrated Field Guide, Mississippi is "a former Confederate state that boasts more Civil War monuments than any other." Though that doesn't surprise me too much, I would have guessed that economic (those things don't come cheap) and population factors would have dictated that Virginia top the list.

Anyway, Sedore's guide "combs through the Mississippi landscape, exploring monuments commemorating important military figures and battles and remembering common soldiers, from rugged veterans to mournful youths. Sedore's insightful commentary captures a character portrait of Mississippi, a state that was ensnared between Northern and Southern ideologies and that paid a high price for seceding from the Union. Sedore's close examinations of these monuments broadens the narrative of Mississippi's heritage and helps to illuminate the impacts of the Civil War."

The format is similar to that found in the author's  An Illustrated Guide to Virginia's Confederate Monuments , which was released back in 2011 through a different publisher. Organized by region and county, the Mississippi register includes a photograph of the monument, copy of its inscription, various physical details, and a few paragraphs of commentary. Unlike the Virginia volume, this one does include GPS coordinates. Fans of the author's work will also be happy to know that a Tennessee edition is scheduled for release in early March.