Summer 2017 Reading

Started Lee Moves North: Robert E. Lee on the Offensive. Examines possible reasons why Lee was unsuccessful in strategic offensive operations (Antietam, Gettysburg, etc.).

In any case, seven years in the to-read stack is sufficient aging. :)

Like wine, we will read no book before its time?

Indeed. :)

Lee's Lieutenants: A Study in Command and R. E. Lee have been in the to-read pile since the second Reagan administration. I need to be in the right mood and have the time for such multiple volume opuses.

>3 surly: My problem is my tastes shift, so I'll dive into ACW history, buy a bunch of books, adding them to my TBR pile. Then -- poof -- I'm pursing Roman history. That's what happened several years ago. I took a break from ACW, detouring into ancient history. I've worked up to the Middle Ages. In the meantime, I keep buying books like Battle of Wills: Ulysses S. Grant, Robert E. Lee, and the Last Year of the Civil War, which I'm looking forward to reading but I don't know when.

"We are in for it!" The First Battle of Kernstown by Gary L. Ecelbarger. Will be visiting there this coming weekend.

On a lighter note, I have just finished The Outcast by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles, which is fiction but set around the American Civil War. Great read with intricate personal relationships as well as covering the War in surprising detail.

Finished an interesting Custer's Trials: A Life on the Frontier of a New America by T. J. Stiles. In spite of the subtitle it actually covers Custer's time in the Civil War in detail as well as the post war period. It is more than just a simple biography as it does a pretty decent job of looking at Custer's character and motivations. Not for everyone, but worth the effort if it is a subject you have an interest in.

Recently finished Master of War on General George Thomas. It was excellent, if only because the biographer definitely argued for Gen Thomas's and against the historical slights by Sherman and Grant.