Another couple western theater titles on my early-2024 Want List

A few weeks ago, I posted my top ten list of most highly anticipated titles slated for release during the first half of next year (if you missed it, you can find the list here). As anticipated, more notices have trickled in, and I'd like to single out two more upcoming books that look to be right up my alley.

Much like what Myron Smith continues to do for gunboats on the western waters, fellow McFarland author Dennis Belcher is doing for the western theater cavalry. With his earlier work largely focused on the leaders, units, and campaigns of the Army of the Cumberland's mounted arm, Belcher switches gears a bit (though the two areas of study do intertwine) with his next book The Cavalry of the Army of the Ohio: A Civil War History. Currently scheduled for an April '24 release (though that may change), the book begins with an examination of the "Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, and Tennessee" cavalry units attached to the Army of the Ohio. It then follows them throughout their late-1862 amalgamation into the Army of the Cumberland and subsequent return to a reconstituted Army of the Ohio. Campaigns and battles covered in the book will include "Camp Wildcat; Mill Springs; the siege of Corinth; raids into East Tennessee; the capture of Morgan during his Great Raid; and the campaigns of Middle Tennessee, Perryville, Knoxville, Atlanta, and Nashville."

For students of the 1864 Atlanta Campaign, all eyes are currently scanning the not-too-distant horizon for the first volume of David Powell's much-anticipated series, but it will very likely be worth their while to spare some time for Robert Jenkins's new contribution The Cassville Affairs: Johnston, Hood, and the Failed Confederate Strategy in the Atlanta Campaign, 19 May 1864 (Mercer, FEB '24). Preceding Earl Hess's fine coverage of the same events by a few years, the amount of detail contained in Jenkins's two-volume study of the period encompassing the aftermath of Kennesaw Mountain through the Battle of Peach Tree (or Peachtree if you prefer) Creek is unsurpassed. Hopefully, the types of editing and presentation concerns raised in my reviews of those earlier titles [here and here] have been addressed throughout the process of putting this fresh effort together. Arguments surrounding alleged missed opportunities by the Confederate leadership at Cassville (those associated with both the infamous aborted attack and the demoralizing decision to retreat without a battle) continue to this day, and it will be interesting to read Jenkins's take on the whole matter. According to the description, the book "promises to change our understanding of the events surrounding the Cassville controversies and close the gap in its history."