Here are some off the top of my head, but I could easily name a hundred more. Of course there are many bad books on the Civil War which have sunk into merciful obscurity:
1. Bruce Catton’s Army of the Potomac trilogy.
2. Bruce Catton’s This Hallowed Ground, his one volume history of the war.
3. Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, a four volume series of magazine articles written in the 1880’s, most of them by generals from the Civil War.
4. Douglas Southall Freeman’s four volume bio of Lee. His Lee’s Lieutenants as a study in command has never been equaled.
5. That Devil Forrest, a bio of the wizard of the saddle written by one of his men who went on to be a surgeon in New York City.
6. The Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant, without a doubt the best memoir written by an American general.
7. Shelby Foote’s novel Shiloh which gave me a much better understanding of the battle.
8. Carl Sandburg’s Lincoln The War Years. Sandburg was a better poet than historian, and some of his research is shaky, but this is a classic that should be read by all students of the War.
9. The Twentieth Maine, probably the best history ever written of a Civil War regiment.
10. John Brown’s Body, the epic poem of the Civil War, written by Stephen Vincent Benet.
Give us your recommendations in the comboxes.
A World on Fire by Amanda Foreman. A view from the Brits on The Late Unpleasantness.
Loved that book! Linked below is my review in 2011:
https://the-american-catholic.com/2011/09/14/the-civil-war-amanda-foreman-oxford-nudity-and-large-families/
I just finished reading it for the second time, actually. It’s really excellent. I gave it to a friend a few years ago when he had to write a paper on the Civil War, and specifically the effect on other countries.
He wrote the paper based on a single line in the book- that the Brits would complain about something we did during the blockade, and after the North justified it, the Brits just wrote down what was said. It came back to bite the US during WWI, when we would complain about the British blockade of Germany, and they would pull out the argument we used during the Civil War.
He got an A, but I did a lot of proofreading, because I enjoy doing it.
[…] Analysis, Punditry, and News:Book Recommendations on the Late Unpleasantness – Donald R. McClarey, J.D., at […]
Allan Nevins’ multivolume history of the coming and course of the War: still probably the best political history.
I have it in my library Bob. A massive work, but if you would understand the years leading up to War from 1848 and the War itself, it is well worth the effort.