Here are 100 books that Days of Glory fans have personally recommended if you like
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I have been fascinated by the American Civil War since I was 8 years old. I have been a serious student of the subject since my college years, where I majored in American History. I have played and designed boardgames concerning battles of the war, including a number of games on battles in the Western Theater, I have been a living historian and reenactor, and now, an author-published by both academic and popular presses. The battle of Chickamauga became a serious interest as early as 1979.
The campaign to capture Atlanta, waged over the summer of 1864, was one of the most decisive events of the entire American Civil War. Historians have argued that Atlanta’s fall, achieved that September, demonstrated to a war-weary North that the Lincoln Administration’s war policies were successful, and that victory was in sight. However, prior to 1992, there was very little coverage of any aspect of the campaign, let alone a narrative history of the full campaign.
Thirty years later, Decision in the West remains the standard work on the Atlanta Campaign. Though Castel’s coverage of individual battles (Resaca, Pickett’s Mill, Kennesaw, Peachtree Creek, the July 22 Battle of Atlanta, etc.) is limited to mostly a command-level discussion of those engagements, his interpretations of the decisions and actions of the three main principals—Sherman for the Federals, Johnston, and Hood for the Confederates—are both fascinating and thought-provoking. The author’s decision to rely…
Following a skirmish on June 28, 1864, a truce is called so the North can remove their dead and wounded. For two hours, Yankees and Rebels mingle, with some of the latter even assisting the former in their grisly work. Newspapers are exchanged. Northern coffee is swapped for Southern tobacco. Yanks crowd around two Rebel generals, soliciting and obtaining autographs. As they part, a Confederate calls to a Yankee, "I hope to miss you, Yank, if I happen to shoot in your direction." "May I, never hit you Johnny if we fight again," comes the reply.
I have been fascinated by the American Civil War since I was 8 years old. I have been a serious student of the subject since my college years, where I majored in American History. I have played and designed boardgames concerning battles of the war, including a number of games on battles in the Western Theater, I have been a living historian and reenactor, and now, an author-published by both academic and popular presses. The battle of Chickamauga became a serious interest as early as 1979.
Thomas L. Connelly’s seminal final volume of his history of the Confederate Army of Tennessee, first published in 1971, remains one of the best works of Civil War history, not just of the Western Theater. Connelly’s writing helped to shift the historical focus from the Eastern Theater, where Robert E. Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia dominated the conversation for more than a century. While the west was not totally neglected, it was clearly an afterthought.
Connelly’s work focused on the long, unfortunate history of the Confederate Army of Tennessee, a command which rarely tasted victory, and was saddled with a host of incompetent leadership from the top down. The long-running dysfunction between army commander Braxton Bragg and senior corps commander Leonidas Polk created chaos on and off the battlefield, eventually leading to Bragg’s replacement and (for a time) Polk’s banishment. Connelly examined and explained this and other command…
Winner of the Fletcher Pratt Award and the Jefferson Davis Award A companion volume to Army of the Heartland
Near the end of 1862 the Army of Tennessee began a long and frustrating struggle against overwhelming obstacles and ultimate defeat. Federal strength was growing, and after the Confederate surrender at Vicksburg, the total Union effort became concentrated against the Army of Tennessee. In the face of these external military problems, the army was also plagued with internal conflict, continuing command discord, and political intrigue.
In Autumn of Glory, the final volume of Thomas Lawrence Connelly's definitive history of one of…
I have been fascinated by the American Civil War since I was 8 years old. I have been a serious student of the subject since my college years, where I majored in American History. I have played and designed boardgames concerning battles of the war, including a number of games on battles in the Western Theater, I have been a living historian and reenactor, and now, an author-published by both academic and popular presses. The battle of Chickamauga became a serious interest as early as 1979.
Though Dr. Timothy B. Smith has since made quite the splash in Civil War historiography, this was his first book, covering the Battle of Champion Hill. On May 16, 1863, two armies collided between the Confederate fortress of Vicksburg and the Mississippi state capital at Jackson. The Federals were led by Ulysses S. Grant; the Rebels, John C. Pemberton. Each army numbered bout 30,000 men. While neither the largest or most famous battle of the war, Champion Hill was, nevertheless, a crucial engagement, for it decided the fate of Vicksburg. Frustrated for months by his inability to capture the fortress, Grant at last settled on a daring strategy to take it from the rear. Pemberton marched out to meet him. They met at Champion Hill.
Smith’s narrative embraces the top-down commander’s view of the battle, the soldiers’ view from the ranks, and the impact the fighting had on the local…
The Battle of Champion Hill on 16 May 1863 was the decisive land engagement of the Vicksburg Campaign. The fighting took place just twenty miles east of the river city, where the advance of General Ulysses S. Grant's Federal army attacked General John C. Pemberton's hastily gathered Confederates.
The bloody fighting see-sawed back and forth until superior Union leadership broke apart the Southern line, sending Pemberton's army into headlong retreat. The victory on Mississippi's wooded hills sealed the fate of both Vicksburg and her large field army, propelled Grant into the national spotlight, and earned him the command of the…
I have been fascinated by the American Civil War since I was 8 years old. I have been a serious student of the subject since my college years, where I majored in American History. I have played and designed boardgames concerning battles of the war, including a number of games on battles in the Western Theater, I have been a living historian and reenactor, and now, an author-published by both academic and popular presses. The battle of Chickamauga became a serious interest as early as 1979.
Several books have been written about the Battle of Shiloh, fought on April 6 and 7, 1862. This is no surprise, as the battle was one of the very first large-scale engagements of the war, with more than 100,000 combatants and producing 23,000 casualties. That staggering butcher’s bill stunned the nation and created a deep-rooted interest in remembering the contest. A National Cemetery was created in 1866, and Shiloh was one of the five original military parks established by Congress in 1895. The park’s interpretive thrust has shaped the outline of the traditional narrative of the battle ever since.
In the 1960s, Edward Cunningham offered a corrective to that traditional narrative, in an unpublished academic thesis. Discarding long-held, preconceived notions, Cunningham hewed closer to the primary sources to provide a deeply insightful new interpretation of the battle. Unfortunately, he never found a publisher for that thesis—until 2009. Though Cunningham had…
The stunning Northern victory at Shiloh in 1942 thrust Union commander Ulysses S. Grant into the national spotlight, claimed the life of Confederate commander Albert S. Johnston, and forever buried the notion that the Civil War would be a short conflict.
Anxious to attack the enemy, Johnston began concentrating Southern forces at Corinth, a major railroad center just below the Tennessee border. His bold plan called for his Army of the Mississippi to march north and destroy General Grant's Army of the Tennessee before it could link up with another Union army on the way to join him.
The writer part should be obvious. I write books under my own name and as a ghostwriter. But also, like any good writer, I am a reader. The earliest books I recall reading, after Dick and Jane, were books on American history, in particular the American Civil War. When I looked to write on my own, this was the first area I looked into. Write what you know. Write what you like to read.
These are the first books I read on the American Civil War as an adult (thank you, History Book Club). Catton lets the reader march with the Army of the Potomac through the war in the east. You don’t just learn what happened, and why. You feel what it was like to be there. Catton never forgets the need to make history a good read as well as a way to transmit information.
Recounting the final year of the Civil War, this classic volume by Bruce Catton won both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award for excellence in non-fiction.
In this final volume of the Army of the Potomac Trilogy, Catton, America's foremost Civil War historian, takes the reader through the battles of the Wilderness, the Bloody Angle, Cold Harbot, the Crater, and on through the horrible months to one moment at Appomattox. Grant, Meade, Sheridan, and Lee vividly come to life in all their failings and triumphs.
I came to Civil War studies fairly late in life but still relatively callow, by a route too roundabout to explain. But after reading James McPherson’s, Battle Cry of Freedom(there’s a bonus book!), I found I had a love of every facet of the era. The only thing I’d ever wanted to be was a writer and, as I delved deeper into the vast body of literature on the American Civil War, I finally felt as if I’d found thesubject I could pour all my passion into (that and my enduring love of dogs). My novel Wilderness, along with a few novels published in French, was the result.
Bruce Catton wrote extensively about the noble but ill-starred Army of the Potomac and is widely known for his wonderful trilogy recounting that army’s path through the American Civil War. With Grant Takes Command, Catton looks west for a time toward General Ulysses S. Grant and how he came east to lead all the Union armies toward eventual victory. Recounting Grant’s (and the country’s) journey from the opening of the cracker line in Chattanooga in 1863, through the Battle of the Wilderness (a subject that captured my imagination!) and the Overland Campaign and on to Appomattox Courthouse and the surrender of the Confederacy, Catton’s book moves through its narrative with a style and verve to match any piece of gripping fiction.
Forming the second part in Grant's biography, the sequel to "Grant Moves South" follows his victory at Chattanooga and subsequent promotion to Commander-in-Chief of the Union forces. The book also provides information as to how the Civil War was won and follows Grant as he directs military operations throughout the last year of the war. The author has won a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award.
I am Honorary Professor of Military History at the University of Kent, having retired from teaching there in 2015. I have held professorial chairs in both the UK and the US. Most of my books have been on the history of the British Army, including on the First World War and, especially, the late Victorian Army between 1872 and 1902. Like others of my generation, I was greatly influenced by the 1964 film Zuluwith Stanley Baker and Michael Caine. The Zulu War has always fascinated me so here is my selection of the best books on Zulus and the war.
Together with John Laband, the late Paul Thompson did an enormous amount to bring to light African perspectives on the war. Originally published in a limited edition in South Africa, this is a study of the Natal Native Contingent raised by the British as auxiliaries from African tribes and groups hostile to the Zulu. Poorly armed, they were blamed unjustly by contemporaries for the British defeat at Isandlwana and roundly blamed thereafter for atrocities associated with the aftermath of subsequent British victories. Thompson’s work is a valuable reminder of the often forgotten part played by Africans in the defeat of their fellow Africans by imperial forces.
Black Africans made up more than half of the British army that invaded Zululand in January of 1879 and went on to fight the storied battles of Isandlwana, Rorke's Drift, and Ulundi. The British force totaled some 16,800 men, at least 9,000 of whom were Africans. Of these a few, perhaps as many as 1,000, were dissident Zulus...The bulk of the large African component, however, was comprised of the Natal Native Contingent (NNC), men recruited from Africans resident in Natal. This is the force whose story Thompson told in a 1997 edition [and he] has produced a revised and expanded…
I’m a soldier, an author, and an army wife – the last fifteen years of my life have revolved around dealing with the fallout of the Iraq war, not only for my family but also as a soldier and a veteran. I write books because I wanted to read about people who stayed in the military after the war started. The best writing advice I ever got came from Robyn Carr who said, write the book that only you can tell. Wrestling with the legacy of a war that we as soldiers did not choose as we return home was something I deeply wanted to understand, both as an army officer and a novelist.
I served in the 1st Cav when Black Sunday happened and then, a few years later, read this book as a newly commissioned second lieutenant, serving in 3HBCT, 1st Cavalry Division several of the men featured in Raddatz’s book.
It provided deeply personal insights into why the boss was driven the way that he was. It was absolutely devastating to read the horror of a lost platoon alongside the struggles of the families back home. Through deeply personal narratives, Raddatz drives home the importance of being prepared for the worst both for the soldiers deployed and the families back home, managing rumors and fear during a mass casualty event, and the will to stay connected to those you served with.
Coming up on the 20-year anniversary of Black Sunday, I give cadets who ask me to commission them a copy of this book – it reminds all of us of…
ABC News’ Chief Global Affairs Correspondent Martha Raddatz shares remarkable tales of heroism, hope, and heartbreak in her account of “Black Sunday”—a battle during one of the deadliest periods of the Iraq War.
The First Cavalry Division came under surprise attack in Sadr City on Sunday April 4, 2004. Over 7,000 miles away, their families awaited the news for forty-eight hellish hours—expecting the worst. In this powerful, unflinching account, Martha Raddatz takes readers from the streets of Baghdad to the home front and tells the story of that horrific day through the eyes of the courageous American men and women…
Flint Whitlock spent five years on active duty as an officer in the U.S. Army (1965-1970, including tours in West Germany and Vietnam), and is a qualified parachutist (Fort Benning, 1965). He has been an award-winning, full-time military historian since 2003, and has 14 books (mostly about WWII) to his credit. He has also been the editor of WWII Quarterly magazine since 2010 and gives battlefield tours for the Smithsonian, National Geographic, and other organizations.
This large (718 pages) book covers the entire history of U.S. military parachute and glider operations—from the early evolution of the concept through landings in North Africa, Sicily, Salerno, Normandy, Southern France, Holland, Battle of the Bulge, Leyte, Manila, and Corregidor. Anyone wanting to appreciate the myriad American parachute and glider operations will find a wealth of information in Devlin’s book.
Photographs and text document the bravery and daring exhibited by American parachute and glider combat forces and offer in-depth treatment of British, German, Japanese, Italian, and French parachute operations
I served as an infantry platoon leader, reconnaissance platoon leader, and rifle company commander in the 199th Light Infantry Brigade. I was an instructor in the Florida Phase of the U.S. Army Ranger School for two years.
How an LRP company commander (1st Cavalry Division) produced one of the most outstanding reconnaissance units of the Vietnam War. Captain George Paccerelli was tough on his men but their Area of Operations composed of triple canopy jungle along the Cambodian border defended by four enemy divisions called for only the best. The book contains nearly unbelievable accounts of reconnaissance, ambushes, and running firefights.
A gripping account of ordinary men with extraordinary courage and heroism who had one last chance to make good—and one helluva war zone to do it in.
The new commander of the Company E, 52d Infantry LRRPs, Capt. George Paccerelli, was tough, but the men’s new AO was brutal. It was bad enough that the provinces of Binh Long, Phuoc Long, and Tay Ninh bordered enemy-friendly Cambodia, but their vast stretches of double- and triple-canopy jungle were also home to four crack enemy divisions, including the Viet Cong’s notorious 95C Regiment.
Only the long-range patrols could deliver the critical strategic…
