Book Review – Page 2 – Blue and Gray Education Society

Book Review: The Last Siege: The Mobile Campaign, Alabama 1865

September 1, 2020August 31, 2020 by Len Riedel

The Last Siege, The Mobile Campaign, Alabama 1865 by Paul Brueske (Casemate Press 2018), $32.95 Twenty-three years ago, BGES obtained a ABPP Grant to conduct a Preservation Conference for the Mobile Campaign. Having spent some time to organize, conduct, and write a report, I was fairly familiar with the key sites related to the campaign … Read more

Book Review: The British Are Coming

July 28, 2020July 28, 2020 by Len Riedel

The British Are Coming: The War for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775–1777 (the Revolution Trilogy) by Rick Atkinson (Henry Holt Press, 2019) $40. I love a single malt scotch and my favorite is GlenFarclas 105. It is hard to come by and I savor every single drink—I could drink it every day, … Read more

Campaign and Battle of Lynchburg, Virginia

January 26, 2012 by Len Riedel

[box]by Charles M. Blackford Warwick House Publishing, Lynchburg, Reprint 1994 Reviewed by Len Riedel, Executive Director, BGES Danville, Virginia January 25, 2012[/box] Charles M. Blackford was a distinguished citizen of Lynchburg who served in the Army of Northern Virginia; however, he did not participate in the battle or campaign of Lynchburg. A highly regarded speaker … Read more

Sustaining Southern Identity: Douglas Southall Freeman and Memory in the Modern South

January 16, 2012 by Len Riedel

If you think you are up to the mental challenge or you just want to get to know a great historian and a legendary American this book will reward you. It is not a casual read; but it is an important intellectual destination for people who expect and want more from history.

The Life and Wars of Gideon J. Pillow

January 15, 2012January 4, 2012 by Len Riedel

[box]By Nathaniel Cheairs Hughes Jr. and Roy P. Stonesifer Jr.
University of North Carolina Press, 1993
Reviewed by Len Riedel, Executive Director, BGES
January 3, 2012, Myrtle Beach, SC[/box]

Gideon Pillow, yes I know the name, he was that guy who skulked away with John B. Floyd at Dover Tennessee and left the fate of the Confederate troops stationed at Fort Donelson to Simon B. Buckner and US Grant—a political general and the worst kind of pretender, totally without merit. Yes that is the name I knew until I read Hughes and Stonesifer’s book. So little interest did I have in Pillow that I acquired the book and had Hughes autograph it in January 1996 — I finally read it 16 years later. That was my misfortune.

Mr. Lincoln’s Brown Water Navy: The Mississippi Squadron

January 15, 2012March 29, 2010 by Len Riedel

[box]By Gary D. Joiner
The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, 2007
Reviewed by Len Riedel, Executive Director, BGES
March 29, 2010.[/box]

Gary Joiner is part of a new breed of historians populating the study of the Civil War. He is the nation’s leading expert on the Louisiana Red River Campaign and has given that region of the country a much needed anchor in Civil War historiography. Gary has become prolific in his publications, discharging years of research in a relatively brief period of time and he has recently undertaken a very prestigious editorial function with the University of Tennessee Press. He holds a faculty position at the Louisiana State University campus at Shreveport—his tours of the Red River in Louisiana are not to be missed.

Sam Richards’s Civil War Diary: A Chronicle of the Atlanta Home Front

January 15, 2012March 8, 2010 by Len Riedel

This is not Mary Chesnut’s Diary from Dixie or John Jones’ A Rebel War Clerk’s Diary. It is however an honest representation of life in Atlanta and the environment around there during the war. The reader will be better informed and empathetic for the effort.

Lincoln in the Times

January 15, 2012February 12, 2010 by Len Riedel

The Life of Abraham Lincoln as originally reported in the New York Times

[box]Edited by David H. Donald and Harold Holzer
St. Martin’s Press, 2005[/box]

I was given this book by Vicki and Jerry Spier following my heart surgery in 2008. I just finished reading it and found myself wishing that I had picked it up as soon as I received it. While there are no shortage of monographs on Abraham Lincoln in and around his Bi-centennial commemoration this book was refreshingly simple and informative. Indeed with so much analysis of Lincoln filling the bookshelves it was a relief to look at Lincoln in the context of his actual life.

Fields of Blood: The Prairie Grove Campaign

January 15, 2012February 11, 2010 by Len Riedel

This book is noteworthy for its straight forward and readable prose. Few people understand the Trans-Mississippi and admittedly it is better understood if you have walked the fields. Shea has done that and I have been privileged enough to walk with him and to see him in action presenting this as a two day tour. That insight made this book an indispensable and easily understood narrative.

Undaunted Heart: The True Story of a Southern Belle and a Yankee General

January 15, 2012December 14, 2009 by Len Riedel

This book accomplishes its primary purpose of sharing the evidence of this important 19th century relationship. It could have been much more. As a general read I can recommend it; however, as a useful historical resource it is clearly wanting.