Booknotes

I should acknowledge review copies publishers have recently taken trouble to send me:

* After the Glory: The Struggles of Black Civil War Veterans. A handsomely designed hardback from University of Kansas Press, this work is divided into topical chapters with the author, Donald Shaffer, addressing each in turn. I'm afraid these are very broad and that they serve merely as bins in which to pile relevant anecdotes. It's a unique first try at this subject; the anecdotes and photos are interesting and that makes this a strong candidate to add to one's personal reference trove.

* The Correspondence of Sarah Morgan and Francis Warrington Dawson: with Selected editorials Written by Sarah Morgan for the Charleston News and Courier. A nice hardcover package from the University of Georgia Press, this is part of a trend in publishing literate, private correspondence between ACW couples. I feel uneasy looking at the private correspondence of lovers, even at this remove but there is broad human interest here - fine writing by physically attractive young people living through great events - and one of them a lady editorialist who marries her man only after her secret career in journalism provides her financial means. Editor Giselle Roberts is trying to break this duo out of the regional studies pen. I don't think she'll succeed, but good try.

* I wrote previously about Chickamauga: A Battlefield History in Images based on printer's proofs. In final form, it is an attractive coffee table book offering the one thing we demand of the genre - intermittent browsing pleasure. I am not sure Chickamauga specialists will learn anything, and am too ignorant to know if the author's commentary is sound, but the organization of the book is interesting and should provoke even experts to visit less well known corners of this battlefield. The whole book, you see, is organized around sub-battlefields, providing an historic illustration or photo for each (e.g. Dyer field). There's a labeled aerial (or satellite) photo in the front, but in my case it did little to orient me geographically for the writing that followed.

* Blind Horses is a novel by Brian Massey from iUniverse and quite a nice paperback product it is. It's a very much dialog-driven western novel about those ACW veterans Jesse James and Cole Younger evading the law in - hang on - Minnesota. Author Brian Massey has fairly good control over his material and offers a unique take on these two legendary badmen: "Patriots turned rebel, Christians branded outlaw, their angst cries out in a wilderness not unlike that of Modern America." Gutsy. I hate outlaws but like gutsy.

I'll recap August ACW book releases later this week, with links.