A number of publishers have been increasing their line of Civil War titles since I began paying attention in 1998. Kent State University is one such and the editorial judgment used in selecting its projects is impressive, going far beyond the battle books that are the staple of this publishing niche.

I notice The University of Georgia Press is doing more Civil War and, as with KSU, exercising superb care in its title selection. I have just received what promises to be a terrific read in ACW historiography… Never Surrender: Confederate Memory and Conservatism in the South Carolina Upcountry by W. Scott Poole. "The mystagogy of Confederate religion …" Language like that makes me pine for the glory days of the Voegelin movement in the 1960s, when the "eschaton" was "immanentized" for the last time. (I'm being arcane but not ironic.)

Another superb offering, due in May, has reached me in proof form: Chickamauga: A Battlefield History in Images by Roger C. Linton. The title is misleading, as this is a kind of guidebook to the battlefield with old and new images … not a guidebook that says "Turn left on Route 123," but one in which excerpts from accounts of the battle are mapped to diagrams and photos, some of the photos being of utilitarian value (picturing terrain) and some of purely nostalgic worth. This is a very different kind of book in a field hostile to innovation.

Congratulations to University of Georgia Press; thanks, too, for trifling with some of the rigid publishing conventions that limit our enjoyment of ACW history.