CWPT Recommended Reading

Here's a list of books for just about every interest. All of these books are available from Amazon Books, and you can order them online at Amazon.com. While we know this list is not complete (more than 90,000 titles have been published about the Civil War), it's definitely a good place to start.

We will periodically add recently published books and Civil War titles recommended by our members. What do you think? E-mail us your suggestions.

General Works Guide Books Diaries Politics Slavery & Abolition Reconstruction Battles & Campaigns Navy Cavalry Biography Prisons Medicine Native Americans Women Fiction Children's Books Miscellaneous

Boatner, Mark M. III, The Civil War Dictionary

Catton, Bruce, America Goes to War, The Civil War and Its Meaning in American Culture

Catton, Bruce, The American Heritage New History of the Civil War

Catton, Bruce, The Centennial History of the Civil War

Time Life Books, The Civil War

Foote, Shelby, The Civil War, A Narrative

McPherson, James, The Atlas of the Civil War

McPherson, James, Drawn with the Sword, Reflections on the American Civil War

U.S. War Department, The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies

Freeman, Douglas Southall, Lee’s Lieutenants, A Study in Command

Johnson, Robert Underwood and Clarence Clough Buel, eds., Battles and Leaders of the Civil War

Long, E.B., The Civil War Day by Day, An Almanac 1861-1865

McPherson, James M., Battle Cry of Freedom, The Civil War Era

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The Civil War Trust, The Civil War Trust’s Official Guidebook to the Civil War Discovery Trail, 3rd edition

Frances H. Kennedy, ed., The Civil War Battlefield Guide, 2nd edition

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Beck, Brandon H., Third Alabama! The Civil War Memoir of Brigadier General Cullen Andrews Battle, CSA

Davis, William C. and Meredith L. Swenter, editors, Bluegrass Confederate: The Headquarters Diary of Edward O. Guerrant

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Davis, William C., A Government of One’s Own, The Making of the Confederacy

Fritz, Karen E., Voices in the Storm: Confederate Rhetoric, 1861-1865

Jones, Howard, Union in Peril, The Crisis over British Intervention in the Civil War

Klein, Maury, Days of Defiance, Sumter, Secession, and the Coming of the Civil War

McPherson, James M., Abraham Lincoln and the Second American Revolution

Woodworth, Stephen E., No Band of Brothers: Problems of the Rebel High Command

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Berlin, Ira and others, ed., Freedom, A Documentary History of Emancipation, 1861-1867

Blight, David W., Frederick Douglass’ Civil War, Keeping Faith in Jubilee

Cohen, Anthony Michael, The Underground Railroad: A Personal Journey Through History

Harold, Stanley, The Abolitionists and the South, 1831-1861

McPherson, James, Marching Toward Freedom: Blacks in the Civil War 1861-1865

Zubritsky, John, Fighting Men, A Chronicle of Three Black Civil War Fighting Men

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Foner, Eric and Olivia Mahoney, America’s Reconstruction, People and Politics After the Civil War

Richter, William L., The ABC-Clio Companion to American Reconstruction, 1862-1877

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Bearss, Edwin C., The Vicksburg Campaign

Bearss, Edwin C., Forrest at Brice’s Crossroads and in North Mississippi in 1864

Castel, Albert, Decisions in the West, The Atlanta Campaign of 1864

Catton, Bruce, The Army of the Potomac

Coddington, Edwin B., The Gettysburg Campaign: A Study in Command

Cozzens, Peter, The Shipwreck of Their Hopes, The Battles for Chattanooga

Cushman, Stephen, Bloody Promenade: Reflections on a Civil War Battle

Davis, Burke, To Appomattox, Nine April Days, 1865

Foote, Shelby, Stars in Their Courses, The Gettysburg Campaign June-July 1863

Furgurson, Ernest B., Ashes of Glory, Richmond at War

Furgurson, Ernest B., Chancellorsville 1863, The Souls of the Brave

Hennessy, John J., Return to Bull Run, The Campaign and Battle of Second Manassas

Krick, Robert K., Stonewall Jackson at Cedar Mountain

McDonough, James L., Shiloh, In Hell Before Midnight

Miller, William J., The Peninsula Campaign of 1862, Yorktown to the Seven Days

Moe, Richard, The Last Full Measure: The Life and Death of the First Minnesota Volunteers

Priest, John Michael, Before Antietam, The Battle for South Mountain

Priest, John Michael, Antietam, The Soldier’s Battle

Rhea, Gordon C., The Battle of the Wilderness, May 5-6, 1864

Rhea, Gordon C., The Battles for Spotsylvania Court House and The Road to Yellow Tavern, May 7-12, 1864

Sears, Stephen W., Landscape Turned Red, The Battle of Antietam

Sears, Stephen W., Chancellorsville Shea, William L., and Earl J. Hess, Pea Ridge, Civil War Campaign in the West

Tanner, Robert G., Stonewall in the Valley, Jackson’s Valley Campaign, Spring 1862

Trudeau, Noah Andre, The Last Citadel, Petersburg, Virginia, July 1864-April 1865

Wert, Jeffry D., From Winchester to Cedar Creek, The Shenandoah Campaign of 1864

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Bearss, Edwin C., Hardluck Ironclad: The Sinking and Salvage of the Cairo

Campbell, R. Thomas, The CSS H. L. Hunley: Confederate Submarine

Jones, Virgil Carrington, The Civil War at Sea

Hearn, Chester G., Admiral David Dixon Porter, The Civil War Years

Marvel, William, The Alabama and the Kearsarge, The Sailor’s Civil War

U.S. Navy Department, Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies, 1894-1922

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Crabb, Martha L., Afire to Fight: The Untold Tale of the Civil War's Ninth Texas Cavalry

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Alexander, Edward Porter, Fighting for the Confederacy, The Personal Recollections of General Edward Porter Alexander, edited by Gary W. Gallagher

Chamberlain, Joshua Lawrence, Bayonet Forward! My Civil War Reminiscences

Duncan, Russell, Where Death and Glory Meet: Colonel Robert Gould Shaw and the 54th Massachusetts Infantry

Freeman, Douglas Southall, R.E. Lee, A Biography

Grant, Ulysses S., Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant

Guelzo, Allen C., Abraham Lincoln: The Religion of a President and the Ideas of His Time

Henderson, G. F. R., Stonewall Jackson and the American Civil War

Longacre, Edward G., Joshua Chamberlain: The Man and the Soldier

Longstreet, James, From Manassas to Appomattox, Memoirs of the Civil War in America

Scaturro, Frank J., President Grant Reconsidered

Shaw, Robert Gould, Blue Eyed Child of Fortune, The Civil War Letters of Robert Gould Shaw, edited by Russell Duncan

Sherman, William Tecumseh, Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman

Stuart, James Ewell Brown, The Letters of General James E. B. Stuart, edited by Adele H. Mitchell

Billings, John D., Hardtack and Coffee, or The Unwritten Story of Army Life

Coco, Gregory A., The Civil War Infantryman, In Camp, On the March, and In Battle

Donnelly, Ralph W., The Confederate States Marine Corps, The Rebel Leathernecks

Jones, John B., A Rebel War Clerk’s Diary of the Confederate State Capitol

Linderman, Gerald F., Embattled Courage, The Experience of Combat in the American Civil War

McPherson, James M., For Cause and Comrades, Why Men Fought in the Civil War

Rhodes, Elisha Hunt, All for the Union, The Civil War Diary and Letters of Elisha Hunt Rhodes, edited by Robert H. Rhodes

Watkins, Sam R., Co. Aytch, A Side Show of the Big Show

Whitman, Walt, Walt Whitman’s Civil War, edited by Walter Lowenfels

Wiley, Bell I., The Life of Johnny Reb, The Common Soldier of the Confederacy

Wiley, Bell I., The Life of Billy Yank, The Common Soldier of the Union

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Boaz, Thomas M., Libby Prison and Beyond: A Union Staff Officer in the East, 1862-1865

Gindelsperger, James, Escape from Libby Prison

Kantor, MacKinlay, Andersonville

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Adams, George Worthington, Doctors in Blue, The Medical History of the Union Army in the Civil War

Cunningham, H. H., Doctors in Gray, The Confederate Medical Service

Denney, Robert E., Civil War Medicine, Care and Comfort of the Wounded

Woolsey, Jane Stuart, Hospital Days, Reminiscences of a Civil War Nurse

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Gaines, W. Craig, The Confederate Cherokees, John Drew’s Regiment of Mountain Rifles, The American Indian and The End of the Confederacy, 1863-1866

Hauptmann, Laurence M., Between Two Fires, American Indians in the Civil War

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Baker, Jean H., Mary Todd Lincoln, A Biography

Chesnut, Mary Boykin, Mary Chesnut’s Civil War, edited by C. Vann Woodward

Clay-Copton, Virginia, A Belle of the Fifties: Memoirs of Mrs. Clay of Alabama

Oates, Stephen B., A Woman of Valor, Clara Barton and the Civil War

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Cornwell, Bernard, The Starbuck Chronicles

Crane, Stephen, The Red Badge of Courage

Foote, Shelby, Shiloh

Frazier, Charles, Cold Mountain

McCann, William, Ambrose Bierce’s Civil War

Safire, William, Freedom

Shaara, Jeff, Gods and Generals

Shaara, Jeff, The Last Full Measure

Shaara, Michael, Killer Angels

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Scholastic Books, Dear America Series

When Will This Cruel War Be Over: The Diary of Emma Simpson

A Picture of Freedom, The Diary of Clotee, a Slave Girl, Belmont Plantation, Virginia, 1859

The Journal of James Edmond Pease, A Civil War Union Soldier, Virginia, 1863

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Boge, Georgie and Margie Holder Boge, Paving Over the Past, A History and Guide to Civil War Battlefield Preservation

Brousse, David, Civil War Newspaper Maps, A Cartobibliography of the Northern Daily Press

Confederate Receipt Book, University of Georgia Press (no year)

Cullen, Jim, The Civil War in Popular Culture, A Reusable Past

Davis, William C., The Civil War Cookbook

"Gone with the Wind" Cook Book, Abbeville Press, 1997

Guernsey, Alfred M. and Henry M. Alden, Harper’s Pictorial History of the Civil War

Jouineau, Andrew, Officers and Soldiers of the American Civil War

Kinnard, Roy, The Blue and the Gray on the Silver Screen, More than Eighty Years of Civil War Movies

Lawliss, Chuck, The Civil War Sourcebook

Marius, Richard, The Columbia Book of Civil War Poetry, From Whitman to Walcott

Maxwell, Ronald F., Gods and Generals: The Illustrated Story of the Epic Civil War Film, Newmarkert Press, New York, 2003.

Moore, John Hammond, ed., The Confederate Housewife, Summerhouse Press, Columbia, S.C. 1997

Segars, J. H., In Search of Confederate Ancestors, The Guide

Swank, Wallbrook D., Ballads of the North and South in the Civil War

Zimmer, Anne Carter, The Robert E. lee Family Cooking and Housekeeping Book, University of North Carolina Press, 1997

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