Books and beyond

During this commemoration of the multi-year 150th anniversary of the Civil War, it seems appropriate to highlight some of the best in the JCPL collection. More has been written about the Civil War than any other American war so there is no shortage of choice, but these titles that have risen like cream.

Battle Cry of Freedom: the Civil War Era, by James M. McPherson, is an excellent single volume history with which to begin. He distills the best of 150 years of research and turns it into a flowing, Pulitzer-Prize-winning story.

The Civil War, a Narrative. This unique three-volume set has a Southern slant that illuminates how much of what’s available is clearly from the Northern perspective. When Foote discusses the President, he means Jefferson Davis.

There are two “Great American Novels” from the Civil War. One is Stephen Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage, published in 1895, about the interior life of a common soldier, Henry Fleming, and how he copes with cowardice and the reality of war. The second title is The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara, which also won a Pulitzer. Gettysburg and the generals involved create a breath-taking novel even for people who don’t have any background on the battle.

The Civil War. This 11- hour film is full of the kind of details that make history fascinating. One of the commentators in this series is Shelby Foote and there are many quotations from Mary Chesnut's Civil War. Her diary from behind the Southern lines is full of both an insider’s (she was married to a Senator) and an upper-class citizen’s experience of the war.

One of my favorite quirky pieces in the JCPL collection is the "After Action Report" by Joshua Chamberlain. His humble, no-nonsense report is only six pages, describing his actions at Little Round Top at Gettysburg. It belies the later belief that this might have been the single most important turning point in the war. He was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for his service.

For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War by James M. McPherson (see also the first title). He gathered letters and diaries, only things written at the time, to describe the kind of men they were. I had always wondered how Pickett got his men to walk across 3/4 of a mile of open, flat field in the face of heavy artillery and rifle fire. This book examines their political, spiritual and patriotic beliefs and shows how much has changed, and how little.