Booknotes: The Battle of Jackson, Mississippi

New Arrival:
• The Battle of Jackson, Mississippi, May 14, 1863 by Chris Mackowski (Savas Beatie, 2022).

From the description: "Jackson, Mississippi, played an important role in the decisive Vicksburg Campaign and was the third Confederate state capital to fall to the Union when Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant captured the important rail junction in May of 1863. Drawing on dozens of primary sources and contextualized by the latest scholarship, Chris Mackowski’s The Battle of Jackson, Mississippi, May 14, 1863, offers the most comprehensive account ever published on the subject."

This is the second installment of publisher Savas Beatie's Battles & Leaders series. We'll see how things progress, but the new series seems to be a good home for military monographs that are a bit too big for the ECW series and maybe a bit too small for the 'standard' SB product line.

Only one book published prior to this one has the Battle of Jackson as a major point of focus. Ed Bearss and Warren Grabau devote around 31 pages of densely-packed narrative in their three-part 1981 book The Battle of Jackson May 14, 1863 - The Siege of Jackson, July 10-17, 1863 - and Three Other Post-Vicksburg Actions to this battle and subsequent Union occupation/destruction of the city. Of course, the topic is also covered in Bearss's classic Vicksburg Campaign trilogy, but Mackowski's B&L volume represents the first truly standalone book-length history of the brief May battle fought for control of Mississippi's state capital and primary logistical nerve center.