AGEOD Forums

This may have come up in the past but I cannot find a similar thread via the Search, so I'll start one here.

So, Who is your favorite Civil War Author?

Why?

I'll start this one off. Though there are literally thousands of people to choose from, I'm going to go with Joseph Harsh, author of Confederate Tide Rising: Robert E. Lee and the Making of Southern Strategy, 1861-1862, Taken at the Flood: Robert E. Lee and Confederate Strategy in the Maryland Campaign of 1862, and Sounding the Shallows: A Confederate Companion for the Maryland Campaign of 1862. Harsh refuses to use hindsight in describing the operations of Lee and his Army of Northern Virginia from the seven Days through the end of the Maryland Campaign. Instead, he looks at what Robert E. Lee knew at a given moment and then presents alternatives Lee could have chosen. It makes for a very "you are there" feel. In addition, Harsh is EXTREMELY detailed. Sounding the Shallows is essentially a massive Confederate-focused appendix to Taken at the Flood. I hope he feels well enough to eventually complete a "Northern companion" to the campaign as well at some point.

After Harsh, some of my other favorites are, in no particular order:

-Peter Cozzens
-Gordon Rhea
-Shelby Foote
-A. Wilson Greene
-Eric Wittenberg

Who are yours?

I agree for Harsh for the Maryland Campaign.Thought I knew all I needed to know about Antietam,untill reading him,made me realize that I'm just a rookie.For Gettysburg like Pfanz, very detailed on all parts of the battle, except Picketts charge.Whould love to get his views on it.Is he still alive ? Also like Rhea for the Overland Campaign,great writing style,lots of maps,sure hope he follows thru with Petersburg and Appomattox Campaigns. But my all time favourite is Shelby Foote's The Civil War,that guy really knew how to tell a story.Douglas Southall Freeman's Lee and Lee's Lts. is also high on the list.

Foote.

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I have to say Bruce Catton. His books on the Army of the Potomac and the Centennial History series are just superb. And his one volume history of the war is second to none.

Gray_Lensman wrote:My favorite author is The Government source: to wit "The War of the Rebellion: Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies".

Why? Because almost all other accounts/narratives or whatever refer to that source for the details (in fact, I highly suspect Shelby Foote used it quite extensively to write his 3 volume narrative).

All the other authors are just competing over descriptive ways to display the same information.

I recently found this link to photo scans of this huge work at Cornell university: http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/moa/browse.monographs/waro.html , unfortunately it's not searchable and the various CD versions that can be found are terrible graphic to text translation in PDF form. So bad is the technical translation that the PDF versions are currently useless for searching. The production of a truly accurate searchable PDF (CD/DVD) is taking all my spare time probably for the next 10 years.

Incidentally, Cornell University does have a PDF display of each page, but they are images of the original pages and not in a searchable text format.

I'm in Ithaca and not only work on campus, but have lots of friends/contacts in the library system. Are you looking for something particular? Maybe I can offer a hand?

G: And you say you don't have enough time? LOL t

Although The Official Records are the best source for the Civil War,one should keep in mind, that high ranking officers,are not known for admitting to many mistakes.There's a lot of butt-covering in that 128 volumes.

Foote, followed by Catton and McPherson. I like Foote's narrative approach, regardless of where he got his source material.

Currently re-reading The Iliad, and am hoping one day someone will write the great epic poem of the Civil War. The Civil War combatants loom just as large over our imagination as did the Greeks and Trojans of Homer's time.

Catton and Foote both have the knack of taking you beyond the bare facts. Eicher on the other hand is a valuable source of bare facts.

S! EC

I'm partial to Stephen W. Sears.