Books I Read in 2017

As the December days disappear, it looks like I will not finish another book this year. Therefore, I will post the list of ones I have completed over the last twelve months. I often share the current book I am reading on my Facebook page, and then when finished, I write a brief summary paragraph of it to hopefully spark some curiosity in friends with similar reading interests. However, I've never listed the books that I read in a given year.

I've been keeping a list of books I read since the beginning of 2006. I don't know what a psychiatrist might think if I told him or her that about me, but it has come in handy at times when I've wanted to confirm that I had already read a particular book. Anyway, here goes. Oh, I've highlighted a few of these that I found especially insightful, helpful, or just plain fascinating.

1. Writing the Civil War: The Quest to Understand. Edited by James M. McPherson and William J. Cooper

2. Liberty, Virtue and Progress: Northerners and their War for the Union by Earl J. Hess

3. Slavery and Forced Migration in the Antebellum South by Damian Alan Pargas

4. The Roots of Southern Distinctiveness: Tobacco and Society in Danville, Virginia, 1785-1865 by Frederick F. Siegel

5. Counterfeit Gentlemen: Manhood and Humor in the Old South by John Mayfield

6. Troubled Refuge: Struggling for Freedom in the Civil War by Chandra Manning

7. Slave Life in Virginia and Kentucky: A Narrative by Frances Frederick, Escaped Slave. Edited by C.L. Innes

8. The Peninsula Campaign and the Necessity of Emancipation: African Americans and the Fight for Freedom by Glenn David Basher

9. Dueling in the Old South: Vignettes of Social History by Jack K. Williams

10. The Making of a Racist: A Southerner Reflects on Family, History, and the Slave Trade by Charles B. Dew

11. Reminiscences of Life in Camp by Susie King Taylor

12. River of Dark Dreams: Slavery and Empire in the Cotton Kingdom by Walter Johnson

13. Virginia's Private War: Feeding Body and Soul in the Confederacy, 181-1865 by William Blair

14. The Rebel Yell: A Cultural History by Craig A. Warren

15. Landon Carter's Uneasy Kingdom: Revolution and Rebellion on a Virginia Plantation by Rhys Isaac

16. Creek Paths and Federal Roads: Indians, Settlers, and Slaves and the Making of the American South by Angela Hudson

17. The Peace that Almost Was: The 1861 Washington Peace Conference and the Final Attempt to Avert Civil War by Mark Tooley

18. Freedom by the Sword: The U.S. Colored Troops, 1862-1867 by William A. Dobak

19. Fort Harrison and the Battle of Chaffin's Farm: To Surprise and Capture Richmond by Douglas Crenshaw

20. Richmond Must Fall: The Richmond-Petersburg Campaign, October 1864 by Hampton Newsome

21. The Guerrilla Hunters: Irregular Conflicts during the Civil War. Edited by Brian D. McKnight and Barton A. Myers

22. The First Battle for Petersburg: Attack and Defense of the Cockade City, June 9, 1864 by William Glenn Robertson

23. Thunder at the Gates: The Black Civil War Regiments that Redeemed America by Douglas R. Edgerton

24. John Randolph of Roanoke by David Johnson

25. Lincoln and the U.S. Colored Troops by John David Smith

26. The Bloody Crucible of Courage: Fighting Methods and Combat Experience of the Civil War by Brent Nosworthy

27. To Have and to Hold: Slave Work and Family Life in Antebellum South Carolina by Larry E. Hudson, Jr.

28. We Look Like Men of War by William R. Forstchen

29. Gender and the Sectional Conflict by Nina Silber

30. The Yankee Plague: Escaped Union Prisoners and the Collapse of the Confederacy by Lorien Foote

31. The Making of a Confederate: Walter Lenoir's Civil War by William L. Barney

32. A Troublesome Commerce: The Transformation of the Interstate Slave Trade by Robert H. Gudmestad

33. The Army of the Potomac in the Overland and Petersburg Campaigns: Union Soldiers and Trench Warfare, 1864-1865 by Steven Sodergren

34. William Lowndes Yancey and the Coming of the Civil War by Eric H. Walther

35. South Carolina Fire-Eater: Laurence M. Keitt, 1824-1864 by Holt Merchant

36. Ku Klux: The Birth of the Klan during Reconstruction by Elaine Frantz Parsons

37. The Price for Their Pound of Flesh: The Value of the Enslaved, from Womb to Grave, in the Building of a Nation by Daina Ramey Berry

38. Northerners at War: Reflections on the Civil War Home Front by J. Matthew Gallman

39. The Imperfect Revolution: Anthony Burns an the Landscape of Race in Antebellum America by Gordon S. Barker

40. An Irishman in Dixie: Thomas Conolly's Diary of the Fall of the Confederacy. Edited by Nelson Lankford

41. The Field of Honor: Essays on Southern Character and American Identity. Edited by John Mayfield and Todd Hagstette

42. The Judas Field: A Novel of the Civil War by Howard Bahr

43. The Battle of New Market Heights: Freedom Will be Theirs by the Sword by James S. Price

44. Our Good and Faithful Servant: James Moore Wayne and Georgia Unionism by Joel McMahon

45. Storm Over Texas: The Annexation Controversy and the Road to Civil War by Joel H. Silbey

46. Drift Toward Disunion: The Virginia Slavery Debate of 1831-1832 by Alison Goodyear Freehling

47. Uncommon Valor: A Story of Race, Patriotism, and Glory in the Final Battles of the Civil War by Melvin Claxton and Mark Puls

48. Eagles on Their Buttons: A Black Infantry Regiment in the Civil War by Versalle F. Washington

50. American Scoundrel: The Life of the Notorious Civil War General Dan Sickles by Thomas Keneally

51. The Secret Life of Bacon Tait: A White Slave Trader Married to a Free Woman of Color by Hank Trent

52. War Upon Our Border: Two Ohio Valley Communities Navigate the Civil War by Stephen Rockenbach

53. On to Petersburg: Grant and Lee, June 4-15, 1864 by Gordon Rhea

54. America's Forgotten Caste: Free Blacks in Antebellum Virginia and North Carolina by Rodney Barfield

55. Midnight in America: Darkness, Sleep, and Dreams during the Civil War by Jonathan W. White

56. Freedom's Dawn: The Last Days of John Brown in Virginia by Louis A, DeCaro, Jr.

57. Civil War Citizens: Race, Ethnicity, and Identity in America's Bloodiest Conflict. Edited by Susannah J. Urals

58. Sojourner Truth: A Life, A Symbol by Nell Irvin Painter

59. There is Something About Edgefield: Shining a Light on the Black Community through History, Genealogy, and Genetic DNA by Edna Gail Bush and Natonne Elaine Kemp

60. The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl by Timothy Egan

61. Something Must Be Done About Prince Edward County: A Family, a Virginia Town, a Civil Rights Battle by Kristin Green

So there you go! Sixty-one books in fifty-two weeks. Not too bad. I feel thankful that my life situation allows me such ready access to books, and the time to read them. Like Thomas Jefferson once said, "I cannot live without books!"