Fall/Winter 2024 catalogs - Civil War titles where have ye gone?

I don't have any numbers to back this up, just twenty years of close observation, but it's become pretty clear that the total number of Civil War titles published each year is currently in an extended period of contraction. As an outside observer I can only speculate as to the factors involved and have no access to raw sales data, but at least when it comes to the kinds of books typically addressed on CWBA the downward trend started trickling in that direction somewhere around the mid-point of the Sesquicentennial, with the fade becoming much more pronounced in recent years. On the reader side of things I only have my own site to go from, but there's been no corresponding drop in visitation. 2020 was the site's best year in terms of total visitor numbers (though the pandemic trapping people at home in front of their computers surely played some role in that spike), but the subsequent others haven't been far off.

Thankfully, a core of independent publishers such as Savas Beatie, McFarland, and The History Press are still chugging along pretty nicely, but it's been an increasingly dry well for some time now when it comes to Civil War books put out by museums, research libraries, small local publishers, and historical societies. Perhaps the most startling trend in all this involves the university presses, traditionally one of the bedrocks of Civil War publishing and major source of review submissions to this site.

Indeed, what prompted me to make this post was my survey of the Fall/Winter catalogs of those UPs that for much of this new century typically produced 2 or more Civil War titles per spring and fall publishing season. From a list of fifteen of these old guard UPs, eleven had no 1861-65 titles in their respective Fall '24 catalogs, only two had two titles with considerable CW content, and one had a single offering. Sure, the thinness of this current season is a bit out of the ordinary, but the absence of CW titles has been part of a noticeable trend. A large proportion of those fifteen have ceased regular publication of CW books, and a significant number haven't produced a CW title of any kind in years. If this continues, we'll just have to get used to a new normal of high quality yet much more infrequent releases.

The UP numbers outlook isn't all gloomy, though. Quality of individual releases remains high. That Tennessee has become a positive outlier in actually expanding its number and range of yearly Civil War offerings is a welcome development. Always reliable LSU Press continues to be one of the kings by publishing five titles during this current cycle:

• Reckoning with the Devil: Nathan Bedford Forrest in Myth and Memory (Sept)
• Playing at War: Identity and Memory in Civil War Video Games (Sept)
• The Mexican-American War Experiences of Twelve Civil War Generals (Oct)
• Between Extremes: Seeking the Political Center in the Civil War North (Nov)
• The Confederate Resurgence of 1864 (Nov)

LSU's traditional partner in crime, UNC Press, took a bit of a breather this fall, but they come back strong next spring with a big line-up:

• The Sixth Wisconsin and the Long Civil War: The Biography of a Regiment
• The Second Manassas Campaign
• A Campaign of Giants: The Battle for Petersburg - Volume 2: From the Crater's Aftermath to the Battle of Burgess Mill
• Exceptionalism in Crisis: Faction, Anarchy, and Mexico in the US Imagination during the Civil War Era

Further on the UNC front, I haven't come across any solid indication online yet that Robertson's Chickamauga Campaign V2, as hoped for here, has been placed on the publisher's Spring '25 schedule. We'll have to await official release of their S/S catalog to find out for sure.