Various Things

1. In an earlier post of this kind [here] I passed along some news regarding a pair of upcoming Civil War histories of southern railroads. In it I expressed my hopes for similar book-length attention be paid to the Memphis & Charleston. Helpful reader Curt T. recommended that I check out Paul Harncourt's The Planter's Railway: Excitement and Civil War Years (1995). I dug a little further and found that the author also has another more recent (and, in this case, still in print) M&CRR title under his belt, 2005's Biography of the Memphis and Charleston Railroad, Revised Edition. Even though Google Books tells me that the 2005 book is a revised edition of a 2000 volume of the same title that was released by a different publisher, I would imagine that the newer books, if not direct descendants of The Planter's Railway, at the very least share a lot of content with the 1995 volume.

2. A huge list of upcoming Savas Beatie titles recently dropped. Crowded around a few placeholder dates, the list offers a good idea of what might be coming out over the next few years. I'll just mention a few of the many that caught my eye. The one I am looking forward to most is The Confederate Military Forces in the Trans-Mississippi West, 1861-1865: A Study in Command, a frequently cited 1970s work from historian William Geise that has remained unpublished since then but will thankfully be released in print through SB and editor Michael Forsyth. The publisher is also launching the Savas Beatie Battles & Leaders series, the first two volumes (as far as I can tell) being Eric Wittenberg's Destined to Fail: The Johnson-Gilmor Cavalry Raid around Baltimore, July 10-13, 1864 and Chris Mackowski's The Battle of Jackson, Mississippi, May 14, 1863. There are many more standalones, series titles, and reprints that will be talked about in the future. One of the best ways to track them is to subscribe to the publisher's newsletter.

3. There's been a very noticeable fall off in the Civil War output of quite a few publishers that used to regularly send me titles. Thankfully, some others are moving in the opposite direction. Notable among them is University of Tennessee Press, which continues to expand the number and range of its Civil War publications. Their Spring '22 catalog has a whopping seven Civil War titles in it. Five to ten years ago, I would not have expected their catalog lineup to include a book like Stuart Brandes's Yankee Commandos: How William P. Sanders led a Cavalry Squadron Deep into Confederate Territory. In addition to new Voices series contributions and a pair of Critical Decisions series volumes covering the 1862 Shiloh and Maryland campaigns, there's a southern newspaper history (Stephen Davis and Bill Hendrick's The Atlanta Daily Intelligencer Covers the Civil War), and even a Gen. Daniel Donelson biography!