Chris Mackowski’s Top Ten Civil War Books

Originally published November 2020 · pp. 30–31

Chris Mackowski’s Top Ten Civil War Books The entries on my list are list appear in alphabetical order by author’s last name. 1. The Civil War: A Narrative by Shelby Foote. Random House, 1958, 1963, 1974. I’m gonna get a three-fer here and lump all three books under a single umbrella because Foote’s mammoth work is best appreciated as a work of literature only in its entirety. Yes, each book is expertly constructed to stand on its own, and the chapters about Gettysburg and Vicksburg have been spun off as standalone volumes, but the scope of Foote’s work is sweeping and grand, his attempt at replicating the epic nature of the war itself. His narrative construction is artful, unexpected, and satisfying, and his prose is brilliant, if you can unpack his labyrinthine sentences, which did, I admit, take me some time to figure out. 2. Antietam: The Photographic Legacy of America’s Bloodiest Day by William Frassanito. Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1978. Then-and-now photos of Civil War battlefields have become popular thanks to Frassanito’s seminal work. His groundbreaking scholarship matched historical photos with modern landscapes to shed important light on battles. Nowhere was that work more important, I would argue, than at Antietam, which basically served as the birthplace of modern photojournalism. The photos from Antietam stunned America; Frassanito’s Antietam takes us behind the scenes to show how and why those photos became so important. 3. Memoirs and Selected Letters: Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant / Selected Letters, 1839–1865 by Ulysses S. Grant. Library of America, 1990. Two excellent annotated versions of Grant’s memoirs have been published recently, but I keep my un-annotated Library of America edition on my desk because it’s an excellent resource by the preeminent survivor of the Civil War. “Wars produce many stories of fiction, some of which are told until they are believed to be true,” Grant wrote in his memoirs, which offered his attempt to counter some of those fictions. This edition also contains a useful selection of his most important correspondence, including some of the “pencil talk” that he scribbled on paper in the last weeks of his life as he worked on the memoirs, after his voice had given out. The Rebel Yell and the Yankee Hurrah: The Civil War Journal of a Maine Volunteer, John Haley edited by Ruth Silliker. Down East Book, 1985. Haley, a private in the 17th Maine, had a sharp wit, sharp eye, and sharp pen, and he put them all to use to write one of the most entertaining primary sources of the war. He turns an excellent phrase, and his contemporaneous note-taking ensured real-time observations and impressions rather than the armchair generalling that mars many postwar memoirs. Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from America’s Unfinished Civil War by Tony Horwitz. Pantheon, 1998. Horwitz put his journalistic training to good use by traveling through Civil War America, mostly the South, and reported on what he found. It’s one of the best examples of immersive journalism and travel writing ever written. While the world has changed dramatically since the book first came out, many insights Horwitz discovered still hold true, as does his central premise: America will always be fascinated on some level by our Civil War. A Bohemian Brigade: The Civil War Correspondents, Mostly Rough, Sometimes Ready by James M. Perry. Wiley, 2000. If you think the press is dysfunctional today, take a look at the newspapers wars in the years leading up to and including the war. The “Big Three” editors of New York, Greeley, Bennett, and Raymond, make for entertaining reading in their battles to influence public opinion, but when Perry goes into the field with reporters things really get lively. To the North Anna River: Grant and Lee, May 13–25, 1864 by Gordon Rhea. LSU, 2000. The was the first fulllength microtactical battle study I ever read; I picked it up because it seemed to be about an episode of the war few people talked about, how right I eventually discovered that to be. The third in his Overland Campaign study,

Rhea really hits his stride here. His thorough research and smooth writing come together in top-notch form in this book. 8. Stonewall Jackson: The Man, The Solider, The Legend by James Robertson. Macmillan, 1997. S.C. Gwynne’s more recent Stonewall bio, Rebel Yell, is a more engaging read, but Robertson’s definitive biography remains the doorstop standard for exhaustive research. Jackson saw the world in black and white, yet he was a remarkably complicated guy in many ways, too, and Robertson’s book manages to expertly capture and illuminate this central tension. 9. The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara. David McKay Publications, 1974. Is there another book that’s impacted our modern understanding of the Civil War more than The Killer Angels? The novel inspired Ken Burns’s Civil War, and the later film adaptation of the novel into the film Gettysburg, have had far-reaching implications. On its own, though, it remains a beautifully written novel offering a character-centered approach to the battle of Gettysburg with insights and conjectures that only a novelist can access. Shaara effectively humanizes “marble men.” Instead of a tenth book on my list, let me rattle off a few “Honorable Mentions”: Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane, 1895; The Presidents’ War: Six American Presidents and the Civil War that Divided Them by Chris DeRose, Lyons Press, 2014; Coal Black Horse by Robert Olmstead, Algonquin, 2007; Touched With Fire: Five Presidents And The Civil War Battles That Made Them by James Perry, Public Affairs, 2003; History Through Eyes of Stone: A Survey of Civil War Monuments Near Fredericksburg, Virginia, by Donald C. Pfanz, NPS, 2006.

Chris Mackowski is the editor-in-chief of Emerging Civil War (www.emergingcivilwar.com) and author, co-author, and/or editor of a small library of Civil War books of his own. He teaches writing at St. Bonaventure University, and he’s historian-in-residence at Stevenson Ridge, a historic property on the Spotsylvania Battlefield.