Wert Wins Unprecedented Third Austin Civil War Round Table Book Prize for Bloody Angle Book

Originally published June 2023 · pp. 23

Wert Wins Unprecedented Third Austin Civil War Round Table Book Prize for Bloody Angle Book AUSTIN, Texas—Jeffry Wert has won the 2022 Austin Civil War Round Table’s book prize for his book, The Heart of Hell: The Soldiers’ Struggle for Spotsylvania’s Bloody Angle published by the University of North Carolina Press. Wert will be presented with the prize at the June 15 meeting of the Round Table in Austin, Texas. The prize represents the Round Table’s twenty-eighth annual Daniel M. & Marilyn W. Laney Book Prize, with Wert winning an unprecedented three of them. Wert’s previous winning works were A Brotherhood of Valor (2000) and The Sword of Lincoln, The Army of the Potomac (2006) both from Simon & Schuster. Wert is the author of about a dozen books centered on Civil War history particularly in the eastern theater of operations. Wert’s winning book for 2022 tells the story of the nearly 24hour battle that occurred on May 12, 1864, for a salient in the Confederate entrenchments called the Mule Shoe. Twentyfour hours later the Mule Shoe would be known as the Bloody Angle for the ferocity of the combat waged under harrowing conditions with the combatants mere feet apart. Wert’s book focuses on the common soldiers and their experiences in the battle instead of the generals. A. Wilson Greene, a former Laney Prize winner for his book A Campaign of Giants—The Battle for Petersburg, said of the book, “Jeff Wert’s latest masterpiece is the most complete treatment of the fighting on May 12, 1864, at Spotsylvania Court House ever written. Mining an extensive volume of eyewitness accounts, Wert’s narrative puts readers in the midst of Spotsylvania’s bloody trenches, indeed, in the heart of hell.” Chris Mackowski in his review of the book for the magazine America’s Civil War

Jeffry Wert. wrote, “It is to Wert’s credit that he can weave together such a dark story in a way that keeps it moving while also insisting that readers bear witness. It is the soldiers’ struggle, and as Wert reminds us, it is a struggle unlike any other in the war.” The Laney Prize includes a stipend and is awarded annually by the Austin Civil War Round Table, Inc., for distinguished scholarship and writing on the military or political history of the Civil War. Established by the membership of the Austin Civil War Round Table, the Prize honors the Laneys for their splendid efforts on behalf of the Austin Civil War Round Table, Inc. and especially, for their many efforts to protect the endangered battlefields of the Civil War. Among the previous winners of the Laney Prize are William C. Davis for The Cause Lost, Gary Gallagher for The Confederate War, Richard McMurry for Atlanta: 1864, Gordon C. Rhea for Cold Harbor, Craig L. Symonds for Lincoln and His Admirals, Edwin Bearss and J. Parker Hills for Receding Tide, S.C. Gwynne for Rebel Yell, Donald Miller for Vicksburg, H. W. Brands for The Zealot and the Emancipator and Robert Elder for Calhoun: American Heretic.