Joan Wenner’s Top Five Civil War Books

Originally published November 2020 · p. 23

Joan Wenner’s Top Five Civil War Books 1. Never Call Retreat, Volume Three, The Centennial History of the Civil War by Bruce Catton. Doubleday &

Company, New York, 1965. Terrible Swift Sword, Volume Two, The Centennial History of the Civil War by Bruce Catton. Doubleday & Company, New York, 1963. The Coming Fury, Volume One. The Centennial History of the Civil War by Bruce Catton. Doubleday & Company, New York, 1961. These well researched three volumes by Bruce Catton totaling 1,679 pages provide an indepth, comprehensive understanding of the whole of the Civil War. The Civil War Chronicle, by Richard A. Sauers, Ph.D. Consultant and contributing writer along with Martin F. Graham, George Skoch, and Clint Johnson with Forward by William C. Davis, Publications International, Ltd., Lincolnwood, Illinois, 2004. This book is an easily readable 448 pages full of facts in a timeline format. The timeline runs across the page bottoms listing important battles, engagements, people, and much more from the lead up to the war through to its ‘enduring legacy.’ Heavily illustrated with images of people and places. “Our Little Monitor”—The

Greatest Invention of the Civil War by Anna Gibson Holloway and Jonathan W. White. Kent State University Press, Kent, Ohio, 2018. I reviewed this book by a distinguished curator/maritime historian and an equally distinguished professor in the March 2019 issue of CWN and found its contents impressive; they will tell you all you wanted to know about this famous Civil War vessel. Her turret and guns were retrieved from the Atlantic in 2002 and are currently under ongoing restoration at the Mariners’ Museum & Park at its award-winning USS Monitor Center, Newport News, Va. Joan Wenner, J.D. is a longtime history writer previously published in The Artilleryman, America’s Civil War, and Military Heritage, and also a regular contributor to the Civil War News.