Here are 100 books that Diary of a Civil War Hero fans have personally recommended if you like
Diary of a Civil War Hero.
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I am a retired teacher, author, and researcher/presenter focusing on the real boys of the American Civil War. A Ray Bradbury short story in The Saturday Evening Post back in 1963 first sparked my interest. It focused on a drummer and his general at the Battle of Shiloh–a two-page conversation between them. There was no action. A teenager then, I decided I could do better and began what decades later would become my 4-book series, Journey Into Darkness, a story in four parts. In the years that followed, I became a middle-grade teacher, and my students learned about the Civil War by way of their peers.
I like this book because it is an outstanding collection of images and biographical information about real boys who served in the Union Army during the American Civil War.
I wanted to learn their stories so I could share them with others, in particular, my students–to teach them history through the lives of their peers. I found Keesee’s research extraordinary, a fascinating dive into the lives of real boys who were a part of America’s history yet are generally forgotten today.
As a retired teacher, I continue to share what I’ve learned through my writings and presentations to library patrons and civic and historical organizations.
I am a retired teacher, author, and researcher/presenter focusing on the real boys of the American Civil War. A Ray Bradbury short story in The Saturday Evening Post back in 1963 first sparked my interest. It focused on a drummer and his general at the Battle of Shiloh–a two-page conversation between them. There was no action. A teenager then, I decided I could do better and began what decades later would become my 4-book series, Journey Into Darkness, a story in four parts. In the years that followed, I became a middle-grade teacher, and my students learned about the Civil War by way of their peers.
I love that Jay’s book focused on the youngest to serve, not just in the Union Army but also in the Confederate service. He also delved into a group not mentioned by other researchers, the Home Guard–kids usually 6-12 years of age, most prevalent in the South. I also had the honor of several years of friendship with Jay Hoar by way of correspondence and phone calls.
I treasure his work as it allowed me to journey with these kids in their life stories and, when possible, to see who they were through their images, though many were from later in life. We exchanged our work, his nonfiction research for my historical fiction.
Just who were the youngest soldiers, Union or Confederate, of the Civil War? The culmination of 25 years' research, Professor Hoar presents the heroic, and sometimes tragic, aspects of the war, exemplified in the "littlest" Billy Yanks and Johnny Rebs. More than 40 concise biographies.
I am a retired teacher, author, and researcher/presenter focusing on the real boys of the American Civil War. A Ray Bradbury short story in The Saturday Evening Post back in 1963 first sparked my interest. It focused on a drummer and his general at the Battle of Shiloh–a two-page conversation between them. There was no action. A teenager then, I decided I could do better and began what decades later would become my 4-book series, Journey Into Darkness, a story in four parts. In the years that followed, I became a middle-grade teacher, and my students learned about the Civil War by way of their peers.
I loved how this book blended the experience of Cadet William Hugh McDowell, a cadet from the Virginia Military Institute who fought in the Battle of New Market during the Civil War, with fictional modern-day Benjy, a 20th-century boy who is visiting his grandmother in New Market during his summer vacation. This book blends Benjy’s fictional story with Hugh’s historic and nonfiction life experience.
As a teaching tool, I was able to clarify the difference between fact and fiction for my students in our study of the Civil War. I was later amazed to learn that an element of the story that Elaine had created to tie the two boys together turned out to really exist–the boy’s watch.
While spending his summer vacation at his grandmother's old Virginia home, Benjy Stark meets the ghost of a Virginia Military Institute cadet who died at the Battle of New Market during the Civil War. Reprint.
I am a retired teacher, author, and researcher/presenter focusing on the real boys of the American Civil War. A Ray Bradbury short story in The Saturday Evening Post back in 1963 first sparked my interest. It focused on a drummer and his general at the Battle of Shiloh–a two-page conversation between them. There was no action. A teenager then, I decided I could do better and began what decades later would become my 4-book series, Journey Into Darkness, a story in four parts. In the years that followed, I became a middle-grade teacher, and my students learned about the Civil War by way of their peers.
One of the boys whose story I frequently share in my presentations is 12-year-old Gustave Shurmann. During the war, he had a fascinating experience, serving four different generals as a regimental bugler and spending time in the White House with Tad Lincoln.
I thoroughly enjoyed how William Styple researched Gus’s life and then turned it into a novel through which young readers could live history with Gus through a great story. I appreciated sharing Gus’s life in both formats as I lived it with him while reading this book and researched it, including in Gus’s own words, through excerpts from his own writings.
My entire life I’ve been a historian, a treasure hunter, and a crime solver, which is likely why I became a broadcast journalist and investigative reporter. Having worked cases, worked with police, and asked the questions I believe the public wanted answered, there isn’t much which gets by me. I see every story as a movie and every scene in life as a story that needs telling. One of my passions has always been genealogy which fits right into all of the above. I live by a simple saying, “Be a student of history, not a victim of it.”
It truly is a diary, and it rests in the local county museum in rural Pennsylvania. Being a Pennsylvanian myself, I was fascinated to read this Civil War account of a foot soldier who came back alive and lived to a ripe old age as a local businessman. Bull’s story really does read like a movie script and I plan at some point to do exactly that with it. The story of courage and the logic he uses to get through each day as a soldier, wanting nothing more than to do his duty and to return home.
Having penned several history books, Historical Fiction is as natural to me as wooden teeth were to George Washington. And hopefully, my writing speaks as authentically. But Historical Fiction’s real attraction is that it not only adds realism and depth but also offers readers the chance to learn about our past in an enjoyable format that isn’t tedious or boring. Naturally, that’s if it's crafted well. However, history shouldn’t be just a backdrop, its myriad of events should impact the characters’ lives, and in turn, impact the reader. In that vein, Historical Fiction packs a punch to the intellect and emotions. So I hope you’ll enjoy these timeless classics.
John Jakes’s trilogy is a huge investment of time, but for those who love family sagas, American history and intriguing conflicts, it's a huge banquet to sink your teeth into. This sprawling saga drew me in with its inevitable chain of events, namely the Civil War, and how it split families and friends apart due to a military conflict, one that threatened to split the nation apart and with profound humanitarian rights at its core. Superbly written and even beautifully captured on film, John Jake’s magnum opus is a winner.
Part one of the #1 New York Times bestselling North and South Trilogy—the Civil War saga that inspired the classic television miniseries North and South—with over five million copies sold!
“An entertaining…authentic dramatization of American history.”—The New York Times
From master storyteller John Jakes comes the epic story of two families—the Hazards and the Mains. Separated by vastly different ways of life, joined by the unbreakable bonds of true friendship, and torn asunder by a country on the brink of a bloody conflict that will irrevocably change them all…
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.
Part of the enduring popularity of the Battle of Gettysburg studies, is that the battle offers a true microcosm of the American Civil War—from politics to personalities. A meeting engagement, a desperate struggle, a turning point, and human tragedy on a scale the continent had never seen before, the events of those three days in July still resonant down the years. Guelzo’s book, besides being one of the most recent, offers wonderful descriptions of every facet of the battle with finely-crafted prose and a pacing that will keep readers invested from start to finish.
Winner of the Guggenheim-Lehrman Prize in Military History
An Economist Best Book of the Year
A Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Book of the Year
The Battle of Gettysburg has been written about at length and thoroughly dissected in terms of strategic importance, but never before has a book taken readers so close to the experience of the individual soldier.
Two-time Lincoln Prize winner Allen C. Guelzo shows us the face, the sights and the sounds of nineteenth-century combat: the stone walls and gunpowder clouds of Pickett’s Charge; the reason that the Army of Northern Virginia could be smelled before it…
I am all the characters in this and every book I have written. I grew up in Rome, teach Roman art and architectural history, and am a practicing architect. My books are suffused with the things I love, from culture to cuisine, pace of life, love of consort, affection for children and animals, to the adventures I have been so fortunate to enjoy through my fifties. Reading has been a big part of my education. I have many interests and loves to share. These five book recommendations are but the tip of the iceberg. I became an author so I could write what remains unwritten and read the stories I wish to tell.
I have never been brought so close to a battle and a battlefield experience as when reading this book.
The horror, tension, excitement, valor, and regret of warfare are clearly depicted. The motivations for fighting for a terrible cause are examined. The determination to see things through to the bitter end is in evidence. It is a blueprint for writing warfare and helps the reader understand the excitement and tension in leading troops to the fear and futility of being on the line.
Best of all, Shaara has been able to bring life to Lee, who so often is referred to as a marble man. Here, he’s been humanized, and this alone makes our reading of history so much more personal and relevant.
“My favorite historical novel . . . a superb re-creation of the Battle of Gettysburg, but its real importance is its insight into what the war was about, and what it meant.”—James M. McPherson
In the four most bloody and courageous days of our nation’s history, two armies fought for two conflicting dreams. One dreamed of freedom, the other of a way of life. Far more than rifles and bullets were carried into battle. There were memories. There were promises. There was love. And far more than men fell on those Pennsylvania fields. Bright futures, untested innocence, and pristine beauty…
I'm a lifetime, passionate reader. During the summer vacations, my brother and I would often ride with our father to his job in downtown Mobile and walk to Mobile Public Library, where we would spend all day exploring and reading. Well-written novels with remarkable but believable characters—such as those I've noted here are my passion. I have included novels in my list where I can identify personally with the protagonist. My list of books is varied. They have one thing in common: believable characters who struggle with life—authored by legitimate wordsmiths. When I wrote Angry Heavens as a first-time novelist, it was my history as a reader that I used as a writer.
Whether one is a Civil War buff, or a fan of Sun Tzu’s military strategy, you will find plenty of both in this three-volume set. Volume 1 is: Fort Sumter to Perryville. Volume 2 is: Fredericksburg to Meridian, and Volume 3 is: Red River to Appomattox.
Shelby Foote’s work provided most of the background of Ken Burn’s PBS epic, The Civil War. Anyone who watched that masterpiece and heard the knowledge of Shelby Foote spoken in the most lovely Southern drawl, will not be disappointed in this collection.
The Civil War: A Narrative – 3 volume box set provided significant detail and motivation for me as I wrote my own book. When I had a question about a date, geography of a battle, written correspondence between fighters or allies, or conversations such as took place at Appomattox Courthouse between Generals Grant and Lee, I went immediately to Shelby Foote’s three-volume…
This first volume of Shelby Foote's classic narrative of the Civil War opens with Jefferson Davis’s farewell to the United Senate and ends on the bloody battlefields of Antietam and Perryville, as the full, horrible scope of America’s great war becomes clear. Exhaustively researched and masterfully written, Foote’s epic account of the Civil War unfolds like a classic novel.
Includes maps throughout.
"Here, for a certainty, is one of the great historical narratives…a unique and brilliant achievement, one that must be firmly placed in the ranks of the masters."—Van Allen Bradley, Chicago Daily News
I’ve been fascinated by war since I was literally a toddler. True story, I was the only two-and-a-half-year-old in South Boston, Massachusetts with an adult library card. I had to get one, and to get it to prove to the librarian that I could read, in order to check out certain books that I wanted. I only recall one title, The Battle of Midway. Since then, though I’ve done other things like practice law and become a novelist, most of my adult life was still spent as an enlisted man, non-commissioned officer, and company grade and field grade infantry officer in the Army.
Yes, I know: “Eight volumes? Are you mad, Kratman?”
This is unquestionably the greatest single history on the American Civil War ever written. There are over sixty thousand books about the Civil War in existence. You cannot hope to read them all. This being true, if the subject interests you—and it ought, because the Civil War made the United States what it is—if you can read only eight, make this series the eight. Think of it as a really long single volume work.
