1943, 1952. Start your study of Civil War soldiers with Bell Wiley. Outdated in some respects, but the wealth of first-hand accounts and quotations never get old or cease
5. Corporal Si Klegg and His Pard: How They Lived and Talked, and What They Did and Suffered, While Fighting for the Flag by Wilbur F. Hinman. N.G. Hamilton and Co., 1889. Fiction, yes, and so funny—but also the quintessential American story of
soldiering in the Civil War. 6. Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era by James M. McPherson. Oxford University Books, 1988. Hands down, still the best single-volume synthesis of
7. Two Great Rebel Armies: An Essay in Confederate Military History by Richard H. McMurry. University of North Carolina Press, 1989. A concise and thought-provoking “big picture” essay on why Confederate armies did well in Virginia and but fared poorly everywhere else. If you’ve never read it, it’s a
8. Decision in the West: The Atlanta Campaign of 1864 by Albert Castel. University Press of Kansas, 1992. The
Established 1981
Life Member, Company of Military Historians International Society of Appraisers Life Member, NC Division, SCV Federal Firearms Licensed Dealer
9. What the Yankees Did to Us:
10. Remembering the Civil War:
Dr. Gordon L. Jones is Senior Military Historian and Curator at the Atlanta History Center, where he has worked since 1991. Gordon is responsible for one of the largest collections of Civil War artifacts in the nation. He curated the permanent exhibition Turning Point: The American Civil War (1996) and is the author of Confederate
classic military history interwoven with the political context that made Union victory at Atlanta decisive. A great read, written in the present tense.
Sherman’s Bombardment and Wrecking of Atlanta by Stephen Davis. Mercer University Press, 2012. Takes you back into the original sources to finally bust those romantic Gone With the Wind—era myths about “the burning” of Atlanta. The best-researched and most realistic assessment of Sherman yet written.
Reunion and the Limits of Reconciliation by Caroline E. Janney. University of North Carolina Press, 2014. Read this in conjunction with David W. Blight’s Race and Reunion (2001). Then ask yourself: has the United States ever fully reconciled?
Odyssey: The George W. Wray Jr. Collection (2015.) Gordon recently completed a five-year project to research, restore, and exhibit The Battle of Atlanta cyclorama painting and the locomotive Texas.
Choosing the top ten books in Civil War historiography is a daunting task. Well over 50,000 books have been published on the subject, and each year nearly a hundred more join the ever-expanding library. As a professor who has focused on the Civil War Era for the last two decades, my choices for the “top ten” are perhaps different than most students of the war. I gauge the value of these volumes by how they changed the field of Civil War history as well as how they can be utilized in the classroom.
I do mention a few more than ten, which may seem like cheating. I offer the excuse that those listed are either connected to other works or are optional choices. Additionally, many books may seem dated. I offer no apology; instead, I point out that they have stood the test of time and remain important to the field. Finally, my choices are “military heavy.” Again, I will not apologize for this. While I applaud the many excellent works that cover the various non-military aspects of the war, such as the home front, the role of women, the African American experience, diplomacy, etc., in the end, I believe the war was decided on the battlefield. Thus, my interests and research have led me to those battlefields.
To begin, the best overall studies of the Civil War belong to renowned historian James McPherson. His Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (Oxford University Press, 1988) is universally considered the best single volume on the Civil War. It won the 1989 Pulitzer Prize in History and still remains a must read. In the work, McPherson deftly covers all aspects of the war and posits the critical moments when victory could have been claimed by either side. The book’s only limitation is that it stops in 1865, failing to cover Reconstruction. However, his equally phenomenal Ordeal by Fire: The Civil War and Reconstruction (Alfred A. Knopf, 1982) covers both the war and its aftermath, making it an ideal choice as an introduction to America’s great calamity. As of this date, both works remain at the pinnacle of one-volume studies, and both serve as popular textbooks in most university level Civil War classes.
After gaining an overall knowledge of the war, readers should move on to a detailed look at secession and the Confederacy. While many excellent one-volume studies of the Confederacy have been published, Emory Thomas’s The Confederate Nation, 1861–1865 (Harper Collins, 1979) remains the best introduction to the subject. Thomas’s work builds on his earlier The Confederacy as a Revolutionary Experience (Prentice-Hall, 1970), in which he posits the now widely accepted thesis that the Confederacy was a counter-Revolution against the modernization of Northern society.
Next, it is critical that students of the Civil War understand the motivations of the men who waged the battles that ultimately decided the fate of two nations. Legendary Civil War scholar Bell Wiley’s two seminal works, The Life of Johnny Reb: The Common Soldier of the Confederacy (Bobbs-Merrill, 1943) and The Life of Billy Yank: The Common Soldier of the Union (Bobbs- Merrill, 1952) blazed the trail in their analysis of the life of the ordinary Civil War soldier. Both deserve to be included on this list for their insights and wealth of information. Wiley’s student, a renowned Civil War scholar in his own right, James I. Robertson, used material collected by both Wiley and himself to create the one-volume Soldiers, Blue and Gray (University of South Carolina Press, 1998), an excellent book for Civil War classes.
James McPherson claims another spot for his groundbreaking For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War (Oxford University Press, 1998), which delves into the motivation of Civil War Era soldiers based on the examination of tens of thousands of letters written by soldiers to their families. McPherson finds that differing conceptions of “liberty” drove the men of both sides and of different races into the hellish conflict. For those wishing a concise introduction to McPherson’s ideas, a slim volume covering his early research and thesis can be found in What They Fought For, 1861–1865 (Oxford University Press, 1995), developed from McPherson’s research presentation at the Walter Lynn Fleming lecture series as he completed For Cause and Comrades.
No list would be complete without the inclusion of works focused on the battles, campaigns, and armies of the Civil War. Thomas Connelly’s two-volume study of the Army of Tennessee, Army of the Heartland (Louisiana State University Press, 1967) and Autumn of Glory (Louisiana State University Press, 1971) is still the standard by which Civil War military studies are measured. The work is meticulously researched and thorough. Moreover, Connelly’s determination to focus the outcome of the war on the Western Theater forever changed the Eastern-centric view that had dominated Civil War scholarship until that point. While the debate over where the Civil War was won or lost continues, Connelly gave Western Theater advocates their first solid study.
Naturally, biographies of celebrated individuals who fought and led during the war have been popular in Civil War research and writing. The best of these is still Douglas Southall Freeman’s four-volume study of Robert E. Lee, R.E. Lee: A Biography (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1934- 35). This comprehensive work covers the man and the general in exhaustive detail. While Lee is not a popular figure in today’s culture because of his connection with the Confederacy, a former generation awarded Freeman the Pulitzer Prize for this work in 1935. While it is a hagiographical tribute in many ways, it nonetheless sets a scholarly standard for research and writing in the field. Equally important was Freeman’s critically acclaimed three-volume Lee’s Lieutenants: A Study in Command (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1942–1944), published during the height of the Second World War. Freeman deftly weaves biography with military actions at the strategic and tactical levels to produce a classic that demonstrates how a Civil War army, perhaps the best led of the war, actually functioned. This military study has yet to be surpassed.
The final book on my list is not for scholars or for wellread students of the Civil War Era. The American Heritage Picture History of the Civil War (American Heritage, 1960) by Bruce Catton is for those just beginning to learn the history of America’s greatest tragedy. This volume captured the imagination of a generation. It infused zeal into the Civil War Centennial and awakened enthusiasm for everything associated with the war, from battle reenactments to battlefield preservation. It remains an outstanding and lavishly illustrated overview of the war for young readers. Who can forget those excellent battle map paintings by David Greenspan? Many spent hours poring over those maps as a child, imagining the battles and tracing the course of the fighting. Unfortunately, books for young readers are not