The top 12 Civil War books ever written
One great book for each month of
2011, the sesquicentennial of the War Between the States
By Glenn W. LaFantasie in Salon
If, like me, you received a necktie
with reindeer on it from Santa instead of a good Civil War book under the
Christmas tree, then you might try selecting one for yourself from my own list
of the top 12 Civil War books, which I offer here in the spirit of the season
and, even more appropriately, as the 150th anniversary of the war is about to begin.
Perhaps your own observance of the sesquicentennial could include reading one
of these books a month over the next year. If so, I can promise you’ll be
edified by every one of them, even if they do not end up on your own personal
list of favorite Civil War books. And something more: there’ll be no exam next
December.
Putting together such a list is, of
course, a nearly impossible task, given the stacks and stacks of excellent
books on the Civil War that have been published since 1865. Historians like to
say that 60,000 books, give or take a few thousand, have been written about the
war, but I’d wager that estimate is way too low. One needs only ponder the
steady stream of books on nearly every aspect of the war that regularly roll
off the presses to realize that Americans never seem to get enough of their
favorite war.
Trying to name the top dozen Civil
War books of all time is, admittedly, a brazen act on my part. Nevertheless,
the books on this list are, indeed, my all-time favorites — cherished works
that have informed and inspired me, sometimes leaving me awestruck. In some
cases, I’ve read these books more than once. Each time, I extract something new
from them; never has my opinion of them lessened from reading them again. They
are like old friends: They never wear you out and they don’t ask much from you,
other than that you think of them from time to time and recall what they mean
to you.
All of these books occupy a special
place in my own collection of Civil War works — not only because I’m a Civil
War historian, but also because these happen to be extraordinary books, every
one of which has been written by exceptionally gifted authors. These are the
sort of books you wish you hadn’t read before, if only because you’d
like to recapture the pure delight of reading them fresh for the first time. I
hope you’ll find my descriptions of them enticing enough to seek them out for
yourself. No doubt you might disagree with my assessment of them. One of my
wisest professors once said that books don’t belong to their authors — they
belong to their readers. Every reader will have a different response to these
books, but my hope is that you might enjoy them — or any one of them — as much
as I do.
First, some arbitrary rules that
have guided my selection of titles. I’ve only included books published after
World War II, which means I’m leaving out a long shelf of good books issued
before the second half of the 20th century, some of which still stand the test
of time. Out of necessity, I’ve narrowly defined the universe from which I have
picked my top dozen. For example, I’ve not included any biographies on this
list — an exclusion that some may find indefensible. No series or multivolume
works are included here either, which means that Allan Nevins’ majestic “The Ordeal of the Union” (eight volumes), Bruce Catton’s “Centennial History of the Civil War” (three volumes), and Shelby Foote’s very popular “The Civil War”
(three volumes) are not to be found below, despite the fact that they all
qualify as masterpieces. What’s more, I’ve stuck to only nonfiction titles, so
fans of Margaret Mitchell’s “Gone With the Wind” or Michael Shaara’s “The Killer Angels” (both winners of the Pulitzer Prize) will be disappointed
to see these novels missing from my list.
In any event, here are a dozen books
that, for me, tell the story of the Civil War with literary elegance,
intellectual gusto and enormous flair. Most of these books are in print (and in
paper editions) and may be purchased at your local bookstore, from out-of-print
book dealers, or from any of numerous book retailers on the Internet (links
provided in the list below are to BarnesandNoble.com).
12. “The American Heritage Picture History of the
Civil War”: This coffee-table book, first
published by the old American Heritage magazine company in 1960, offers lavish illustrations,
including scores of photographs by Mathew Brady and other masterful war
photographers, and a lively narrative by Bruce Catton, who was widely
considered at the time to be the dean of Civil War historians. Although
American Heritage tried to update the book for a new generation of readers by
publishing a more dazzling edition in 2001 (mostly by adding illustrations,
captions and sidebars while retaining Catton’s basic text), the original
edition remains a classic; in many respects, the old outshines the new, which
lacks editorial cohesion and seems almost slapdash in its presentation. If you
are a Civil War enthusiast and you don’t own the 1960 edition, your library is
woefully incomplete. If you are only casually interested in the Civil War, this
is the one book you should read and own.
11. “Abraham Lincoln and Civil War America”: This slim book packs a powerful punch. As the title says,
this is as much a book about America during the Civil War era as it is about
Lincoln, who led the Northern states to victory. The late William E. Gienapp,
who taught at Harvard, skillfully weaves Lincoln’s life and the great events of
his lifetime into a single, riveting narrative. What’s remarkable about this
book is how much ground it covers, including perspicacious tidbits about
Lincoln, in just over 200 pages. Felicitously written, this book is captivating
and informative. By no means is this simply a rehash — old wine in a new
bottle. Gienapp offers a fresh perspective on the Civil War and the 16th
president who became one of its most tragic victims.
10. “Lincoln’s Men: How President Lincoln Became
Father to an Army and a Nation”:
As the Civil War erupted, Abraham Lincoln called on the states to supply men
and arms for an army. In doing so, he defined the modern role of the president
as commander in chief. In this robustly written book, William C. Davis, a
prolific and remarkably talented author, explains how Lincoln not only
organized the government to fight the Civil War, but how he successfully won
the affection of the thousands of Northern soldiers who filled the ranks,
marched down dusty roads, and, in so many cases, gave their lives for the Union
cause. For these soldiers, the president became “Father Abraham,” and their
devotion to him and to their country manifested itself in their faith that his
leadership would eventually pilot them down the road to victory. Relying on
unpublished soldier letters and diaries to great effect, Davis reveals in
stunning detail what was in the hearts and minds of Northern soldiers who
adored their president and who made the crucial difference in electing him to a
second term in 1864.
9. “Grant and Sherman: The Friendship That Won
the Civil War”: As Charles Bracelen Flood makes
perfectly clear in this engaging book, the Union would have lost the war had it
not been for the professional and personal relationship between Ulysses S.
Grant, the Union army’s general in chief, and William Tecumseh Sherman, his
subordinate. From the very start of this book, the reader follows these men as
they lead their armies to victory in both theaters of the war, east and west.
Flood’s writing is fluid and compelling: He does not get caught in the trap of
telling one man’s story and then the other, chapter by chapter, like a pendulum
in a grandfather clock — first tick (Grant), then tock (Sherman). Instead, the
author blends his account of the two generals into a perfect whole and makes us
feel, page after page, that we are in the presence of these great soldiers,
marching off to war or sitting by a campfire with them. There is probably no
better book that explains precisely how the Union, guided by these two
brilliant officers, won the Civil War.
8. “Chancellorsville 1863: The Souls of the
Brave”: Countless “battle books” about the
Civil War have been published, particularly over the past 50 years or so, but
this account of Chancellorsville, written by Ernest B. (“Pat”) Furgurson,
stands out as one of the very best. Furgurson, another former journalist, not
only recounts the story behind what most historians regard as Confederate Gen.
Robert E. Lee’s greatest victory, he does so in a manner that keeps the reader
totally enthralled, page after page. Focusing as much on ordinary soldiers as
he does on generals (including Confederate Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson, who
was fatally wounded by “friendly fire”), he depicts the battle as a grim human
ordeal, which it surely was, with men grappling desperately to kill their
enemies in rows and droves, struggling all the while to achieve victory at
practically any cost. As one would expect from a newspaperman, Furgurson has a
fine eye for detail and displays a nimble aptitude for injecting pathos into
this tale of two armies bent on destroying one another. His prose flows with a
simple felicity that is enviable. One sentence offers a prime example: “The
rain fell and the river rose.” Sounds like Hemingway. Reads like F. Scott
Fitzgerald.
7. “Landscape Turned Red: The Battle of Antietam”: This is probably the best book ever written on any single
battle of the Civil War. On Sept. 17, 1862, the Confederate Army of Northern
Virginia, under the command of Robert E. Lee, clashed in Maryland with the
Union Army of the Potomac, led by George B. McClellan, in what would turn out
to be the single bloodiest day of the Civil War and in all of American history.
The casualties were staggering: More than 23,000 soldiers were killed, lay
wounded on the field, or went missing after the battle. Stephen W. Sears, the
author of several splendid Civil War books, conveys all the human drama of the
battle, skillfully shifting from generals to soldiers in the ranks to
reconstruct the battle through the eyes of the men who fought it. With
deftness, Sears shows how this great fight — which ended technically in a draw
— unfolded by fits and starts, with no one on either side having control over
what was taking place or what would happen next, a whirlwind of men and noise
that ripped from one end of the battlefield to the other, the whole outcome
fully dependent on contingency, fate and luck. Although Sears is not a lyricist
(his writing tends to be lean and taut), he writes with terrific polish and
great authority.
6. “Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches From
the Unfinished Civil War”:
Actually this is not a book about the Civil War; rather, it’s a book about how
Americans — and particularly Southerners — think about the war today and how
the war’s legacies continue to shape our lives. In the 1990s, Tony Horwitz,
another journalist, took to the highways to discover for himself what the Civil
War means to modern Americans. He hoped to find out why the Civil War looms so
large in the nation’s memory, so much so that “living historians” spend
thousands of dollars outfitting themselves as Yankees and Rebels who fire blank
cartridges at one another in Civil War battle reenactments, and other
Americans, black and white, still struggle over the Confederate battle flag,
one of the war’s caustic symbols of the “Lost Cause.” In describing his travels
through the South, Horowitz delineates how the Civil War lives on in our
culture. His book is a funny, sober, poignant, and intelligent report on why
the Civil War seems never to have ended. But Horwitz, for all his whimsy,
reaches a serious and unsettling conclusion: We, as a nation, are nowhere near
laying to rest the problems that the Civil War failed to solve.
5. “Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American
Memory”: David W. Blight’s book, published
in 2001, explores how the past is connected to the present by looking at the
ways in which Americans have remembered the Civil War. His deeply researched
and carefully crafted study argues that after the war white veterans, Union and
Confederate, facilitated the reconciliation of the two sections by consciously
avoiding the fact that slavery had brought on the sectional conflict, choosing
instead to celebrate the courage that they and their comrades had brandished in
battle. Less consciously, they and their fellow Americans found this new
narrative — this rewriting of history based on a kind of historical amnesia —
comforting and restorative. Reunification became a joyful event, but it came at
a steep price. After Reconstruction, Northerners and Southerners alike took
hold of a “Lost Cause” ideology that showed pity toward the South in its
defeat, accepted Jim Crow policies that deprived blacks of their civil rights,
and pushed for policies and practices that would ensure white supremacy across
the land. Blight carefully avoids grinding axes as he makes his argument, which
taken as a whole helps to explain why America today continues to wrestle with
the seemingly endless and divisive issue of race, even while a black man
resides in the White House. Here is a powerful book, artfully written by a
scholar of learned poise who believes that by knowing the past we might better
know ourselves.
4. “This Republic of Suffering: Death and the
American Civil War”: This
book takes stamina, not because it is poorly written or because it fails to
command the reader’s attention, but because it deals with an enormously
difficult, but vitally important, subject — how death, which came to nearly
every household during the four years of the Civil War, was perceived and
handled by the soldiers on the front lines and civilians on the home front as
North and South tried to cope with a war that produced, as one Union officer
called it, “a carnival of death.” Drew Gilpin Faust, a historian who’s now the
president of Harvard, addresses a topic that other historians have failed to
discuss in any depth or substance, often because our own romantic images of the
Civil War block out its most distressing — and grisly — reality. More than
620,000 Union and Confederate soldiers died in the war, which meant that
Northerners and Southerners had to deal with the deaths of loved ones and
friends in unprecedented numbers — shocking casualty figures that exceeded
anything that Americans ever experienced before. Faust’s prose is appropriately
somber in tone. Her stately style, however, fits perfectly with her subject;
she discusses the ultimate horror of war, the grim loss of lives on
battlefields far away, and how those left behind — soldiers and civilians alike
— struggled to cope with their emptiness and their grief. This is a sobering
book; but it is also brilliant and profound.
3. “Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era”: For many people, this is their favorite Civil War book.
Awarded the Pulitzer Prize for history in 1989 for this book, James M.
McPherson, now a professor emeritus at Princeton University, set out to tell
the story of the Civil War in a single (though huge) volume by writing a
gripping narrative that relied on eyewitness accounts of the war and on the
most recent scholarship in the field of Civil War studies. He achieved his goal
admirably and with great flourish. By any measure, this is the best one-volume
history of the war. McPherson’s prose shines, even bedazzles, throughout the
book, although he’s less than agile in making transitions within chapters from
one subject to the next, and his writing sometimes grows suddenly dull and
weak, only to gain strength by the next chapter. Nonetheless, this is a great
book, an epic book — herculean in size and scope. McPherson’s mastery of the
war’s details alone defies comprehension. It’s doubtful that any other
historian will come along soon with the necessary talent and energy to write a
single-volume history of the war that can match this one in style, content and
substance.
2. “The Destructive War: William Tecumseh
Sherman, Stonewall Jackson, and the Americans”: Charles Royster’s book is unlike any other I’ve ever read
about the Civil War. For one thing, it’s badly subtitled; the main title should
have been left to stand on its own. For another, it defies ready description
because it offers a nuanced — and, to a certain degree, a disturbing —
interpretation of the Civil War. Drawing on an impressive array of primary and
secondary sources, Royster, a distinguished professor at Louisiana State
University, paints a multilayered and strikingly vibrant portrait of American
society in the war years by displaying its true colors — the war, he argues, in
all its destructive and terrible brutality, was precisely the kind of war that
the nation’s citizens, North and South, wanted (in other words, be careful what
you wish for), despite all the lamentations that could be heard as the war grew
in intensity and became increasingly more cataclysmal from one battle to the
next. But Royster does not stop there. He explains how Americans, who expressed
a deep ambivalence in their feelings about the war, could be passively shocked
by their own destructiveness and, at the same time, aggressively hopeful that
their armies would totally annihilate the enemy, leaving no foe standing by
war’s end. Still, he points out, Americans on both sides, Northerners and
Southerners, exaggerated the actual levels of violence and destruction that
occurred during the war, leading subsequent generations to conclude that the Civil
War resembled the total warfare of the 20th century. Even so, there was no
denying the warrior instincts of generals like Stonewall Jackson and William
Tecumseh Sherman, both of whom seem to have thrived on battle and the chaos of
war. With lucid prose, and by combining narrative and thematic chapters into an
innovative mosaic, Royster unveils a Civil War that is totally at odds with
what you’ve read before or what you think you know about the conflict.
Nevertheless, his rendition of the war — filled with all its complexities,
ambiguities, vicarious pleasures, overwhelming miseries, inherent
contradictions, violent hyperbole and actual violence — makes utter sense. The
Civil War, in other words, was no simple episode in our nation’s history,
despite all our efforts to see it only as blue versus gray, brother against
brother. The book, published in 1991, won the Bancroft Prize in American
History. It should have won a Pulitzer.
1. “A Stillness at Appomattox”: My top choice did win a Pulitzer for its author, Bruce
Catton. For those who aren’t familiar with his works, which are plentiful, he
was probably the 20th century’s foremost American writer of narrative
histories, most of which were about the Civil War. Published in 1953, “A
Stillness at Appomattox” details the experiences of the Army of the Potomac
during the final year of the war, but it is much more than a retelling of an
often told tale. In fact, one could say this book is a prose poem to the Army
of the Potomac and the men who fought in it. As a child growing up in Michigan,
Catton knew and spoke to Civil War veterans in his small hometown. Although a
good part of his career was spent as a newspaper journalist and columnist, he
took up writing Civil War books in the 1950s, became the senior editor of
American Heritage magazine, and gained great fame as an author until his death
in 1978. Catton wrote not only with a journalist’s eye, but also with a
novelist’s sensibilities (although he only ever published one novel on the
Civil War for juvenile readers). Today his name — and the quality of his work —
is largely forgotten, although Civil War historians and enthusiasts still heap
high praise on him for his long list of highly satisfying Civil War books and
biographies. “A Stillness at Appomattox” stands out from all the rest of his
writings. As this fine book reveals so expressively, Catton forged a trail for
later Civil War historians by writing his account of the Army of the Potomac
from the point of view of soldiers in the ranks. By means of lilting sentences,
adroit portraits of men and their peccadilloes, and iron-hard descriptions of
men in battle, Catton turns the Army of the Potomac into more than a mass of
men in wartime; his picture of the army and its soldiers convinces you that he
was there with them, which of course he wasn’t, but you feel that anyway
because his narrative carries you back into the world in which those soldiers
lived and died. Beneath the surface of Catton’s chronicle runs the awful
specter of the tolls of war — how war dehumanizes, stultifies, and yet breeds
comradery, trust and even love among those who wage it. Long before academic
historians turned to highlighting the “face of battle” in their military
studies of the Civil War, Catton sketched accurately and effectively the dour
features of that face. More to his credit, Catton discussed — in this book and
in others — how slavery was the cause of the war, the plight of slaves and
freedmen as the war wore on, and the importance of the Union cause as a driving
force behind the determination of Northern soldiers to win the war and reunite
the country. This book leaves sharp images lingering in the reader’s mind,
largely because Catton expertly sets scenes, describes people in human terms,
and refuses to disguise the ugly, malevolent and heartless aspects of war. Yet,
in the end, the book is surprisingly uplifting, a splendid tale of victory, no doubt
because Catton so adeptly uses irony and compassion to tell the Army of the
Potomac’s story. Walt Whitman once famously said, “the real war will never get
in the books.” He was wrong. The real war, in all its dimensions, can be
luminously found in this, the best book ever written about the Civil War.
Glenn
W. LaFantasie is the Richard Frockt Family Professor of Civil War History at
Western Kentucky University. He is working on a book about Abraham Lincoln and
Ulysses S. Grant.
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