Booknotes: Decisions at Perryville

New Arrival:
• Decisions at Perryville: The Twenty-Two Critical Decisions That Defined the Battle by Larry Peterson (UT Press, 2022).

Readers of Larry Peterson's Decisions of the 1862 Kentucky Campaign (2019) might recall the intentional omission of most Perryville coverage in anticipation of the author's planned standalone treatment of the state's largest Civil War battle. We now have that promised Command Decisions in America’s Civil War series volume in this year's Decisions at Perryville: The Twenty-Two Critical Decisions That Defined the Battle. Indeed, Peterson notes in the preface to this volume his preference going forward for devoting separate volumes to campaigns and their component battles.

From the description: Decisions at Perryville "explores the critical decisions made by Confederate and Union commanders during the battle and how these decisions shaped its outcome. Rather than offering a history of the battle, Larry Peterson hones in on a sequence of critical decisions made by commanders on both sides of the contest to provide a blueprint of the Battle of Perryville at its tactical core. Identifying and exploring the critical decisions in this way allows students of the battle to progress from a knowledge of what happened to a mature grasp of why events happened."

Readers of the campaign companion might also remember that Peterson is a bit more bullish than most when it comes to Confederate prospects for success in Kentucky. In this volume, the author sets the stage for his look at the battle itself with a brief introduction to the campaign that frames it within the context of the so-called "Confederate High Tide" of late-summer 1862. Addressing the week and a half period preceding Perryville are six critical decisions. Four more decisions are set during the morning phase of Perryville, ten during the heat of battle in the afternoon, and two are related to the aftermath of the campaign and battle.

The book's collection of 22 critical decisions is well balanced between the sides, and, as expected, the great majority (15) are tactical in nature. Filling in the rest are four strategic decisions and one personnel, logistical, and operational decision each. Reflective of their roles as primary decision-makers on multiple levels, Don Carlos Buell is the author of six decisions, Braxton Bragg five, and Leonidas Polk four.

Fourteen maps accompany the decision analysis. The sixty-page driving tour, itself supported by eleven maps, is tied to the main section's decision analysis and retains the same general format presented in the rest of the series. The tour text is generously supplemented by lengthy excerpts from official reports along with scattered modern battlefield photographs. Readers "looking for a concise introduction to the battle can tour this sacred ground—or read about it at their leisure—with key insights into the campaign and a deeper understanding of the Civil War itself." Orders of battle comprise the remaining two parts of the appendix section.