Daniel A. Masters to Receive Atlanta Round Table Award

Originally published July-August 2025 · p. 43

The Atlanta Civil War Round Table is pleased to announce that it has chosen Daniel A. Masters as the winner of its 2025 Richard Barksdale Harwell Award for his Hell by The Acre: A Narrative History of the Stones River Campaign, November 1862-January 1863. The Round Table presents the Harwell Award annually for the best book on a Civil War subject published in the previous year. Named for the Atlanta Civil War Round Table’s founder and first president, a nationally recognized librarian, bibliographer, and historian, the award consists of a monetary prize and an engraved plaque and has been awarded each year since 1989. Mr. Masters will address the Round Table at its February 2026 meeting.

“This book is the biography of the battle through the eyes of the men who lived through it,” said Robert Fugate, chairman of the Round Table’s Harwell Award Committee. “The author’s extensive use of contemporaneous sources, mainly from the common soldiers’ viewpoint and many for the first time, brings a freshness and immediacy to the story that stays with the reader long after finishing the book.”

Daniel A. Masters, a graduate of the University of Toledo with a BA in Communications, is perhaps best known for his popular blog, Dan Masters’ Civil War Chronicles. His work focuses on the war in the Western Theater from the perspective of the men in the ranks. He is the author of many articles in various journals and magazines and ten books on the Civil War. His 2017 Sherman’s Praetorian Guard won a local history publication award from Bowling Green State University; another earlier work, a collaboration with Larry M. Strayer entitled Echoes of Battle: Annals of Ohio’s Soldiers in the Civil War, was released in 2022. His Harwell Award-winning book was published by Savas Beatie.

The Round Table is now accepting nominations for the books published in the current year. See the website for submission guidelines: https://atlantacwrt.org/bookawards.htm.