Which Books Influenced You the Most?

[Eric Tipton]

Greetings:

Each of us has a book that we hold near and dear to our heart. A lot of us probably have several. In my case, the books I have been most influenced by are The Sixth Ohio Regimental History, US Grant's Memoirs, Bloody April By Wiley Sword and Rebels at the Gate By Hunter Lesser. Each of these books influenced me and created a connection with a place written about in the book. In the case of Shiloh, it is probably my favorite place to visit of all of the CW sites. Chickamauga is probably a close second. You know that feeling when you have read an account in a book and then you are standing on the exact spot where it happened? Probably the best CW rush for me outside of an event.

So, which books have most-influenced you since you became interested in the Civil War?

[Tyler Underwood]

Re: Which Books Influenced You the Most?

If I was to pick one book that has really had an impact on me it would be Bloody Banners and Barefoot Boys by Dr. J.P. Cannon. It has really given me a sense of the hardships that the confederate private endured during the war. It has also influenced me in a professional aspect as well. As a career service member every time I think things are going bad with work, I think about what Dr. Cannon experienced and realize that things are not all that bad.

[Ken Knopp]

Re: Which Books Influenced You the Most?

Eric, this is a great question.

I can say that as a little boy I had a lot of books that captured my interest and got me interested in the CW. Biographies about JEB Stuart, John Pelham, Lee and of course Jackson got me started. Then it was books about battles as I entered my teens and twenties. Later, as I got more into cavalry operations it was biographies about Forrest.....yes, anything Forrest. Still so today I admit. Perhaps surprisingly, the book I think had the greatest impact on me was "Ploughshares into Swords" by Frank Vandiver. I have always been attracted by the "untold story" and this story about the administrative genius, organizational skills and leadership of Josiah Gorgas was simply incredible. There would have been a very short war, almost no Confederate fighting man that we admire today...so to speak anyway, if it were not for him.

I often wondered in my subconscious and aloud about "how" the Confederacy was able to build such an army from nothing (an agrarian economy with no manufacturing) in so short a time and to be such a fighting force. There are many layers to that question but, "how" this was done is so critical in my opinion, to understanding the spirit, ingenuity, resourcefulness, dedication of the South and the "elan" of the Confederate soldier. This book answered those sub-surface questions in telling "how" it built and sustained that effort.

Later in life, as I researched my own book I quite often found Frank Vandiver's name on receipts as "checking out" very obscure folders in Southern state and local archives. For example, as I did my own research it was really thrilling to see that the last person that "checked out" or looked at a certain quartermaster folder or pieces of correspondence in the Mississippi State archives was Frank Vandiver in 1944! About 1999, I had the wonderful opportunity to speak with Frank Vandiver about his research. He told me an incredible story about how he wooed Josiah Gorgas' two surviving daughters during WWII or, should I say, "they" finally gave in and allowed him into their world from which he was able to find and reveal Josiah Gorgas papers. His relating to me the story of how he made several trips to Tuscaloosa Ala during the War, their reluctance then final capitulation of their extremely stoic Southern manners to allow him up the stairs at their home at the Univ of Ala., and into J. Gorgas' personal trunk (that had probably not been opened at that time for 50 years) and how he found letters written and signed by Davis, Lee etc, Gorgas's General's commission, uniform, then finally how he discovered Gorgas's personal, hand written diary (that spanned nearly 40 years), under a false bottom in the trunk. Then, how he turned all of that and more into the above book.....Well, that was nothing short of hearing Gorgas himself tell the story! What an honor and a thrill!

For some, this book is boring because there is little blood and guts but this book and then the entire diary published later by the Univ. of Ala. is much more a personal story of a simple but virtuous man, his family, very trying times and their fight against incredible, relentless and fnally overwhelming odds for their cause and their very survival. It is a story of war, of love, of family, honor, tradition, God, country and it is quintessentially American. I might also add that it is a very sad story in it displays an America that "was" greater than it is today so reminds us of what we are losing... right now.

Good stuff!

Ken R Knopp

[Hairy Nation Boys]

Re: Which Books Influenced You the Most?

Bruce Catton American Heritage The Civil War. Got it from my aunt in 5th grade for Christmas and birthday present. I spent hours looking at the maps, pictures and reading. IT was THE book that got me hooked. Oh I have others but none were as important as that one book.

[Eric Tipton]

Re: Which Books Influenced You the Most?

Holler:

You just reminded me that I forgot to mention William Frassanito's Gettysburg Book. I, like many others, I'm sure have gone out and found his camera angles. Did it at Gettysburg and Antietam. Ever seen the picture of the dead white horse in the Antietam book?

[Andy Ackeret]

Re: Which Books Influenced You the Most?

The first "real" Civil War history book I read was James McPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom, that was in High School.

Since then, books that have meant a lot to me include memoirs:
Echoes of the Civil War As I Hear Them by Michael H. Fitch
A Pair of Blankets by William H. Stewart
Service With The 6th Wisconsin Volunteers by Rufus Dawes
The Haskell Memoirs by John Haskell

For modern scholarship,
Soldiering in the Army of Tennessee by Larry Daniel
Earl Hess's volumes on trench warfare
and all of the histories related to the Iron Brigade by Lance Herdegen.

[Michael Comer]

Re: Which Books Influenced You the Most?

The American Heritage book was the same for me. 3rd grade. Got it at the school library, pored over every page and looked at those maps for hours with all the figures on them. I still pull down my copy and go over those maps and enjoy them now just as much as I did then.

[Jeremy Bevard]

Re: Which Books Influenced You the Most?

Mine is very mainstream, a used copy of The Killer Angels. My dad read it and suggested that I read it. Being younger I didn't read to many books as there were to many video games to play. I had some interest in American history and the Civil War but reading about it bored me however this book started the fire. I found out that I loved to read and learn about the micro and not the macro of history, the human experience. By the time I was 20 in 2001 I was tired of just reading about it and I Googled Civil War Reenacting.

[Tyler Underwood]

Re: Which Books Influenced You the Most?

Andy, A Pair of Blankets is a very intriguing title. What can you tell me about it?

[Andy Ackeret]

Re: Which Books Influenced You the Most?

Tyler,

It's the memoirs of William Stewart, an officer in the Army of Northern Virginia. The title is a reference to the two captured federal navy blankets he used during the war. He adds some other captured items to his collection as the war continues.

[Daniel]

Re: Which Books Influenced You the Most?

I am a bit older than most of you guys. As a boy "Great Battles of The Civil War" by the editors of Life magazine. Wonderful illustrations in that book. "Landscape Turned Red" by Sears. "A Carolinian Goes to War" by Arthur M. Manigault. And "A Stillness at Appomatox" by Catton.

Dan Stewart

[Sackcoat]

Re: Which Books Influenced You the Most?

The most influential for me are the books written from personal accounts. The first was "The Blue and the a Gray" I bought when I was 12. Reading the words of the people who actually experienced this event put the war in a whole new light.

More recent first hand accounts include "My Life in the Irish Brigade" and "Civil War Journal of a Union Soldier".

[JerseyMutt]

Re: Which Books Influenced You the Most?

While I portray Southern soldiers, I'm originally from NJ. Beginning my love of Civil war history there, I naturally gravitated towards an interest in Federal units first. The first book that really fed my passion was Three Rousing Cheers; A History of the 15th New Jersey Infantry from Flemington to Appomattox. by Joseph Bilby. My mom purchased it for me when I was 13 at a book signing with Mr Bilby. The second was All for the Union: The Civil War Diary & Letters of Elisha Hunt Rhodes.

[DougCooper]

Re: Which Books Influenced You the Most?

The American Heritage Book of the Civil War...wore the poor thing out as a kid. As an adult, three books stand out - "Mother May You Never See the Sights I Have Seen" - 57th Mass Inf by Wilkinson, "Embattled Courage" by Linderman and "Hardtack and Coffee", the classic by Billings.

[AndrewGrim]

Re: Which Books Influenced You the Most?

Probably the first was Hard Tack and Coffee. More recently it was Francis Dawson's Reminiscences of Confederate Service. Los Angeles in Civil War Days by John W. Robinson, The California Gold Rush and the Coming of the Civil War by Leonard L. Richards, and The Army of the Pacific 1860-1866 by Aurora Hunt, have all given local perspective to the war.