Benable — create shareable lists of things you recommend!
E.g., products you love, local businesses, travel recs - you can add anything to a Benable list!
Blue, Grey & Gunsmoke: The 15 Best American Civil War Books (Histories, Memoirs & Novels)
15
items I love Ken Burns' 1990 documentary The Civil War: the slow pans across old photographs, Ashokan Farewell on the fiddle, Shelby Foote's voice, and the letters read over the top. This list is for anyone it hooked the same way. Five histories that read ...
Sections
3
THE LONG VIEW: HISTORIES THAT READ LIKE NOVELS
THE VOICES FROM KEN BURNS' CIVIL WAR
UNDER FIRE: THE GREAT CIVIL WAR NOVELS
THE LONG VIEW: HISTORIES THAT READ LIKE NOVELS
Narrative history at its best: big, readable books on why the war came, how it was fought and why it ended the way it did. Start with McPherson for the whole war in one volume, then go deep with Foote.
The best one-volume history of the war, and a Pulitzer winner. Clear on the politics and clear on the ground: you always know where the armies are and why the next river or railhead mattered.
Battle Cry of Freedom by James M. McPherson
Foote was the star of the Ken Burns documentary, and this is his life's work: three volumes, nearly 3,000 pages, twenty years of writing. This set is all first printings in their original dust jackets.
The Civil War: A Narrative by Shelby Foote (First Edition 3-Volume Set)
The last year of the Army of the Potomac, from the Wilderness to Appomattox. Catton writes like a novelist, and you feel every mile of Grant's long sidestep south towards Richmond.
A Stillness at Appomattox by Bruce Catton
The battle hour by hour. Guelzo is excellent on terrain: why Cemetery Ridge, Culp's Hill and Little Round Top mattered, and what the men could and couldn't see from them.
Gettysburg: The Last Invasion by Allen C. Guelzo
Lincoln and the men who wanted his job, then served in his cabinet. The war seen from Washington, and the clearest picture of how Lincoln actually ran it.
Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin
THE VOICES FROM KEN BURNS' CIVIL WAR
If the documentary got under your skin, it was the voices: diaries, letters and memoirs read over those old photographs. Here are the books behind them, plus the companion volume itself.
The companion book to the 1990 series, written with Ric and Ken Burns and packed with the photographs, maps and letters from the films. This copy is signed by Ken Burns on the title page.
The Civil War: An Illustrated History by Geoffrey C. Ward, Ric Burns & Ken Burns (Signed by Ken Burns)
The diary of a South Carolina insider: sharp, funny and often appalled. One of the documentary's great voices, and C. Vann Woodward's edition won the Pulitzer.
Mary Chesnut's Civil War, edited by C. Vann Woodward
A Tennessee private's memoir of four years in the Confederate ranks, from Shiloh to the end. Funny, bitter and honest. Watkins is one of the voices Burns returns to again and again.
Co. Aytch by Sam R. Watkins
Rhodes enlisted as a private from Rhode Island and finished the war commanding his regiment. Four years with the Army of the Potomac, in the plain, decent prose the documentary made famous.
All for the Union by Elisha Hunt Rhodes
Written as he was dying, and still the best memoir by any general. As a mapmaker I love it: his account of the Vicksburg campaign makes the ground, the rivers and the supply problem crystal clear.
Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant
UNDER FIRE: THE GREAT CIVIL WAR NOVELS
Fiction that puts you in the ranks, from the Pulitzer-winning Gettysburg novel to a deserter's long walk home. Foote wrote novels too, and Shiloh is the one to read.
Gettysburg over three days through Lee, Longstreet, Chamberlain and Buford. The fight for Little Round Top is unforgettable, and the ground in the book matches the battlefield.
The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara
A wounded Confederate deserter walks home across North Carolina to the Blue Ridge. Beautifully written, and the landscape is as much a character as Inman or Ada.
Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier
Sherman's army cuts through Georgia and the Carolinas, dragging freed slaves, refugees and camp followers in its wake. The best novel about the march to the sea.
The March by E. L. Doctorow
Foote's own novel of the 1862 battle, told by soldiers on both sides in turn. Short, sharp and the perfect partner to his Narrative and his voice in the documentary.
Shiloh by Shelby Foote
A young Union recruit's first battle, and the fear that comes with it. Crane was born after the war and never saw combat, yet it still reads as true as any memoir.
The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane