Tuesday, December 31, 2019

Books I Read in 2019


This is the third year that I've shared the list of books that I read over the last 365 days. My hope in sharing this list is that readers here may see a title that sparks their interest enough to also read it. Like the past two years I've highlighted those titles that I found particularly enlightening or that I especially enjoyed. So . . . here we go!

1. The Blood of Emmett Till by Timothy B. Tyson

2. The War for the Common Soldier: How Men Thought, Fought, and Survived Civil War Armies by Peter S. Carmichael

3. Intensely Human: The Health of the Black Soldier in the American Civil War by Margaret Humphreys

4. Corporal Si Klegg and His Pard by Wilbur F. Hinman

5. Denmark Vesey's Garden: Slavery and Memory in the Cradle of the Confederacy by Ethan J. Kytle and Blaine Roberts

6. Braxton Bragg: The Most Hated Man of the Confederacy by Earl J. Hess

7. Nat Turner and the Rising in Southampton County by David F. Allmendinger

8. Embattled Freedom: Journeys through the Civil War's Slave Refugee Camps by Amy Murrell Taylor

9. Faces of the Civil War Navies by Ronald Coddington

10. DeBow's Review: The Antebellum Vision of a New South by John V. Kvack

11. Nature's Civil War: Common Soldiers and the Environment in 1862 Virginia by Katheryn Shively Meier

12. The Good Lord Bird by James McBride

13. Oberlin: Hotbed of Abolitionism by J. Brent Morris

14. American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia by Edmund S. Morgan

15. God's Almost Chosen Peoples: A Religious History of the American Civil War by George C. Rable

16. Lincoln and the Abolitionists by Stanley Harrold

17. Money Over Mastery, Family Over Freedom: Slavery in the Antebellum Upper South by Calvin Schermerhorn

18. Hard Marching Every Day: The Civil War Letters Private Wilbur Fisk, 1861-1865, ed. by Emil Rosenblatt et al.

19. The Quarter and the Fields: Slave Families in the Non-Cotton South by Damian Alan Pargas

20. Iron Dawn: The Monitor, the Merrimack, and the Civil War Sea Battle that Changed History by Richard Snow

21. Looming Civil War: How 19th Century Americans Imagined the Future by Jason Phillips

22. General Lee's Immortals: The Branch-Lane Brigade by Michael C. Hardy

23. Letters from the Storm: The Intimate Civil War Letters of Lt. J. A. H Foster, ed. by Walter L. Dowell

24. Conquered: Why the Army of Tennessee Failed by Larry J. Daniel

25. Private Confederacies: The Emotional World of Southern Men as Citizens and Soldiers by James J. Broomall

26. Huts and History: The Historical Archaeology of Military Encampment during the Civil War, ed. by David Gerald Orr, et al.

27. The Fight for the Old North State: The Civil War in North Carolina, January-May 1864 by Hampton Newsome

28. Slave Trading in the Old South by Frederic Bancroft

29. Raising the White Flag: How Surrender Defined the American Civil War by David Silkenat

30. Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain and the Petersburg Campaign by Dennis A. Rasbach

31. A Great Sacrifice: Northern Black Soldiers, their Families, and the Experience of Civil War by James G. Menendez

32. Practical Liberators: Union Officers in the Western Theater during the Civil War by Kristopher Teeters

33. The First Republican Army: The Army of Virginia and the Radicalization of the Civil War by John H. Matsui

34. War of Vengeance: Acts of Retaliation against Civil War POWs by Lonnie R. Speer

35. Keep the Days: Reading the Civil War Diaries of Southern Women by Steven M. Stowe

36. War Matters: Material Culture in the Civil War Era, ed by Joan Cashin

37. Broke by the War: Letters of a Slave Trader, ed. by Edmund L. Drago

38. Executing Daniel Bright: Race, Loyalty, and Guerrilla Violence in a Coastal Carolina Community, 1861-1865 by Barton A. Myers

39. Richmond Shall Not Be Given Up: The Seven Days' Battles by Doug Crenshaw

40. In the Cause of Liberty: How the Civil War Redefined American Ideals, ed. by William J. Cooper et al.

41. Voices of the Civil War: The Seven Day by Time Life Editors

42. War Stuff: The Struggle for Human and Environmental Resources in the American Civil War by Joan E. Cashin

43. Spying on the South: An Odyssey across the American Divide by Tony Horwitz

44. Sex and the Civil War: Soldiers, Pornography, an the Making of American Morality by Judith Giesberg

45. Seeds of Empire: Cotton, Slavery, and the Transformation of the Texas Borderlands, 1800-1850 by Andrew J. Torget

46. Virtue of Cain: For Slave to Senator - Biography of Lawrence Cain by Kevin M. Cherry Sr.

47. Andersonville: The Last Depot by William Marvel

48. They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South by Stephanie Jones-Rogers

49. Searching for Black Confederates: The Civil War's Most Persistent Myth by Kevin Levin

50. I Remain Yours: Common Lives in Civil War Letters by Christopher Hager

51. The Tie That Bound Us: The Women of John Brown's Family and the Legacy of Radical Abolitionism by Bonnie Laughlin-Schultz

52. March by Geraldine Brooks

53. Henry Clay: The Man Who Would be President by James C. Klotter

54. Thank God My Regiment an African One: The Civil War Diary of Col. Nathan W. Daniels, ed. by C. P. Weaver

55. Slave Against Slave: Plantation Violence in the Old South by Jeff Forret

56. Upon the Fields of Battle: Essays on the Military History of America's Civil War ed. by Andrew Bledsoe et al.

57. The Won Cause: Black and White Comradeship in the Grand Army of the Republic by Barbara Gannon

58. The Weeping Time: Memory and the Largest Slave Auction in American History by Anne C. Bailey

Well, I came up just two books short of last year's total. I guess I'm just going to have to either read shorter books or at a faster pace, but averaging over a book a week again is pretty good. I hope you see something here you might want to read. Happy New Year!

2 comments:

  1. Thanks for sharing that list Tim. I definitely want to read the book about Braxton Bragg and General Lee's Immortals. I'm glad you recommended "Fight for the Old North State". I found that book a very enjoyable read.

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  2. Hi Paul, You're welcome! I'm glad you enjoyed "The Fight for the Old North State." I'd like to recommend Hampton Newsome's other book, "Richmond Must Fall." It is on the October 1864 fighting around Petersburg and Richmond. It's very well researched and written. Happy reading!

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