Len Riedel 
It had to happen. Covid reached out and touched us last week and, while irritating and somewhat inconvenient, we completed our mission. I wanted to tell you about what happened and how we handled it. During our “Central Plains Indian Wars” tour, we discussed our protocols at the opening briefing. Conforming with the existing guidance, … Read more
Reflections on the Civil War By Bruce Catton, edited by John Leekley (Doubleday and Company, 1981, 240 pages plus index) In 1973, as a cadet at Virginia Military Institute, I took the legendary professor John Barrett’s course on the Civil War and Reconstruction. As part of the class, we were required to read 1,000 pages … Read more
Hymns of the Republic: The Story of the Final Year of the American Civil War By Samuel C. Gwynne (Scribner Press, 2019, 325 pages) A couple of years ago I was given Rebel Yell, a new biography on Stonewall Jackson that was very highly regarded. I set it aside, having read Bud Robertson’s definitive biography on Jackson. … Read more
Articles of War: Winners, Losers, and Some Who Were Both in the Civil War By Albert Castel (Stackpole Books, 2001, 244 pages) With a personal library of more than 5,000 books, I have more books than I will ever read in my life. And so, in selecting “unread” books, I went to my various … Read more
The Road to Appomattox By Bell Irvin Wiley (Memphis State College Press, 1956) A legend in the Civil War historical community, Bell Wiley was noted for his two seminal studies of the common soldiers of the Confederacy and Union: The Life of Johnny Reb was published in 1943 in the midst of World War 2, and The … Read more
When the BGES completed The Civil War, A Traveler’s Guide with the National Geographic Society in 2016, it marked the fourth successful full-length book project to go along with 19 scholarly monographs as part of the body of BGES’s published intellectual works. We immediately opened discussions with Nat Geo for a fifth book, on the … Read more
And suddenly it is 2022. As BGES winds down its 28th year of operations (in April 2022), we have seen a stunning reversal of fortunes, with membership growing and members digging a little deeper to show their appreciation for all that BGES does for education and preservation and to ensure we have the resources to … Read more
A year-long, $35,000 effort is winding down for 2021 just a little short of the finish line, but nonetheless robust in its achievements. Working with Lincoln Archives founder and Documents on Wheels proprietor, Karen Needles, we have converted raw video never intended for this end to digital files and brought them to the BGES website. … Read more
Storm Over the Land: A Profile of the Civil War By Carl Sandburg (Mariner Books, 2000; originally published 1939) In our current assault on American history, it is often useful to reflect back on how war was treated in our past. Pulitzer Prize–winning poet and historian Carl Sandburg presents us with one such prism with … Read more
Three fundraisers supported by 100 individual donors raised over $36,000 to assist BGES in several critical areas and further strengthened our financial position as the 2021 fiscal year winds down. The calls for support were quickly and generously responded to, displaying the widespread and loyal devotion to the BGES from its members and friends. No … Read more
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