Len Riedel 
I am proud to welcome you to the BGES Video Archives, which officially opens on January 1, 2021. As you know, we have an archive of more than 1,000 hours of video divided between lectures and field tours. We divided this project into two phases: the lectures and the field tours. The lectures span some … Read more
If 2020 has injected anything into our discipline, it has been the explosive increase of Zoom presentations and virtual tours from organizations that normally meet in person. BGES will join in the process in less than a week and has developed a schedule through June 14, 2021. We will meet once a week initially, on … Read more
Covid had changed all of our lives, but prior to it, BGES enjoyed its best response ever to a new tradition that has no purpose other than to balance the BGES books. BGES’s Annual Bucket Appeal is timed to help people considering their tax vulnerability and the ongoing needs of their favored charitable organizations to … Read more
This is a 10-day offer only. We have no guarantees after December 16. You may purchase copies of our limited edition special leather editions of Fields of Honor, Receding Tide, and Shiloh 1862 for just $45 inclusive of priority mail shipping. Click here. You may buy copies of our special leather edition of The Civil War, A … Read more
The Real Horse Soldiers: Benjamin Grierson’s Epic 1863 Civil War Raid Through Mississippi By Timothy Smith (Savas Beatie, 2018 HB, 2020 SB), $19.95 There is perhaps no Civil War operation that is better known but which no one knows anything about than Grierson’s 1863 raid through Mississippi in April–May 1863. Made legendary by John Wayne’s popular … Read more
The best news of the year is that several vaccines will soon begin circulating with widespread immunizations starting in January and February 2021. While details are in the small print, the general working belief is that the first vaccine takes 30 days to create antibodies and that a booster shot will be required. Nationally, the … Read more
BGES members and friends have really come through this year! Our various fundraising efforts have largely offset the lost but budgeted revenue created by the coronavirus. We have completed projects and raised funds when pledged funds were not received. We have funded and completed the projects we planned before the virus hit—thank you. Now we … Read more
As BGES navigated the troubled waters stirred by Coronavirus, we sought to sell 1,000 books to net an estimated $38,000. Pretty aggressive for a group of 400-plus members, but amazingly enough we did sell and ship nearly 400 books—a net of nearly $18,000, and we aren’t quite done. While a Silent Auction of rare collectors … Read more
Besieged, Mobile 1865 by Russell W. Blount, Jr. (Pelican Press, 2015), $26.95 In 1861, Union commanding general Winfield Scott articulated the Anaconda Plan, a strategy that would defeat the nascent Confederacy by closing down all its lines of commerce, thereby depriving it of a commercial base. Closing ports of trade would deny … Read more
Sometimes you instinctively do the right things from the start and then eventually realize what you have done was really important. So it is with BGES’s latest project, The BGES Video Archives. In October 1994 we assembled an all-star team at the Holiday Inn at the Richmond Airport to do a one-day symposium of lectures preceding … Read more