Every week we are asked by students, buffs, and Civil War enthusiasts about books related to the Civil War. Most inquiries are from folks just getting interested in the topic and want to learn a little bit more about the topic. One would think this would be an easy question to answer, but it is not. Tens of thousands of books have been written about the Civil War Era. These books all vary in length, quality, and depth. Just like these works, readers also vary. Readers may be looking for information about one general, one battle, or the Civil War as a whole. Below is a list of books to get you started down the road of Civil War scholarship. By no means is this a comprehensive list of titles, rather it is a list of some of the best books on the topic. Start reading about the American Revolution and the War of 1812.
General Civil War
A Savage War: A Military History of the Civil War by Williamson Murray and Wayne Wei-siang Hsieh
Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era by James M. McPherson
Battle Maps of the Civil War: The Eastern Theater by The American Battlefield Trust
National Park Service Civil War Series
The American War: A History of the Civil War Era by Gary W. Gallagher and Joan Waugh
This Great Struggle: America's Civil War by Steven E. Woodworth
Battles and Campaigns:
Fields of Honor: Pivotal Battles of the Civil War by Edwin C. Bearss
Landscape Turned Red: The Battle of Antietam by Stephen W. Sears
Receding Tide: Vicksburg and Gettysburg—The Campaigns that Changed the Civil War by Edwin C. Bearss and J. Parker Hills
Return to Bull Run: The Campaign and Battle of Second Manassas by John Hennessy
Shiloh: Bloody April by Wiley Sword
Six Armies in Tennessee: The Chickamauga and Chattanooga Campaigns by Steven E. Woodworth
The Battle of the Wilderness, May 5-6, 1864 by Gordon C. Rhea
The Day Dixie Died: The Battle of Atlanta by Gary Ecelbarger
The Gettysburg Campaign: A Study in Command by Edwin B. Coddington
Biographies:
Braxton Bragg: The Most Hated Man of the Confederacy by Earl J. Hess
George Henry Thomas: As True as Steel by Brian Steel Wills
Grant by Ron Chernow
Lincoln by David Herbert Donald
Robert E. Lee: A Biography by Emory M. Thomas
Stonewall Jackson: The Man, The Soldier, The Legend by James I. Robertson, Jr.
Stonewall of the West: Patrick Cleburne and the Civil War by Craig L. Symonds
Winfield Scott Hancock: A Soldier’s Life by David M. Jordan
Famous Military Units:
The Irish Brigade in the Civil War: The 69th New York and Other Irish Regiments of the Army of the Potomac by Joseph G. Bilby
The Iron Brigade: A Military History by Alan T. Nolan
Mosby's Rangers by Jeffrey D. Wert
Stand Firm Ye Boys From Maine: The 20th Maine and the Gettysburg Campaign by Thomas A. Desjardin
The Orphan Brigade: The Kentucky Confederates Who Couldn't Go Home by William C. Davis
The Stonewall Brigade by James I. Robertson, Jr.
Medical Care:
Bleeding Blue and Gray: Civil War Surgery and the Evolution of American Medicine by Ira Rutkow
Civil War Medicine by C. Keith Wilbur
Gangrene and Glory: Medical Care During the American Civil War by Frank R. Freemon
Women at the Front: Hospital Workers in Civil War America by Jane E. Schultz
Memory Studies:
Altogether Fitting and Proper: Civil War Battlefield Preservation in History, Memory, and Policy, 1861-2015 by Timothy B. Smith
Dixie's Daughters: The United Daughters of the Confederacy and the Preservation of Confederate Culture by Karen L. Cox
The Enduring Civil War: Reflections on the Great American Crisis by Gary W. Gallagher
Marching Home: Union Veterans and Their Unending Civil War by Dr. Brain Matthew Jordan
Pickett's Charge in History and Memory by Dr. Carol Reardon
Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory by David W. Blight
Standing Soldiers, Kneeling Slaves: Race, War, and Monument in Nineteenth-Century America by Kirk Savage
The False Cause: Fraud, Fabrication, and White Supremacy in Confederate Memory by Adam H. Domby
The Myth of the Lost Cause and Civil War History edited by Gary W. Gallagher and Alan T. Nolan
Military Memoirs, Diaries, or Letter Collections:
A Diary of Battle: The Personal Journal of Charles S. Wainwright, 1861-1865 edited by Allan Nevins
All for the Union: The Civil War Diary & Letters of Elisha Hunt Rhodes edited by Robert Hunt Rhodes
Blue-Eyed Child of Fortune: The Civil War Letters of Colonel Robert Gould Shaw edited by Russell Duncan
Company Aytch: A Classic Memoir of the Civil War by Sam Watkins
Fighting for the Confederacy: The Personal Recollections of General Edward Porter Alexander edited by Gary W. Gallagher
From the Cannon's Mouth: The Civil War Letters of General Alpheus S. Williams edited by Milo M. Quaife
I Rode With Stonewall: The War Experiences of the Youngest Member of Jackson's Staff by Henry Kyd Douglas
With Grant & Meade: From the Wilderness to Appomattox by Theodore Lyman
Miscellaneous:
Civil War Infantry Tactics: Training, Combat, and Small Unit Effectiveness by Earl J. Hess
Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War by Tony Horwitz
Fighting the Second Civil War: A History of Battlefield Preservation and the Emergence of the Civil War Trust by Bob Zeller
Gettysburg: A Journey in Time by William A. Frassanito
The Life of Johnny Reb and Billy Yank by Bell I. Wiley
The Smoothbore Volley that Doomed the Confederacy: The Death of Stonewall Jackson and Other Chapters on the Army of Northern Virginia by Robert K. Krick
This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War by Drew Gilpin Faust
When Sherman Marched North from the Sea: Resistance on the Confederate Home Front by Jacqueline Glass Campbell
Monument Studies:
Civil War Monuments and the Militarization of America by Thomas J. Brown
Gettysburg: Stories of Men and Monuments: As Told By Battlefield Guides by Frederick W. Hawthorne
Written In Stone: Public Monuments In Changing Societies by Sanford Levinson
Multi-Volume Series:
Battles and Leaders of the Civil War
Jefferson Davis: The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government by James M. McPherson
Lee by Douglas Southall Freeman
Lee's Lieutenants: A Study in Command by Douglas Southall Freeman
The Civil War: A Narrative by Shelby Foote
Novels:
Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier
Gods and Generals by Jeff Shaara
Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
Roots: The Saga of an American Family by Alex Haley
The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara
The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane
Widow of the South by Robert Hicks
Politics:
Apostles of Disunion: Southern Secession Commissioners and the Causes of the Civil War by Charles B. Dew
A Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin
Embattled Rebel: Jefferson Davis as Commander in Chief by James M. McPherson
Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase For Lincoln's Killer by James L. Swanson
The Confederate Nation 1861-1865 by Emory M. Thomas
The Confederate Republic: A Revolution Against Politics by George C. Rable
The Impending Crisis: America Before the Civil War, 1848-1861 by David M. Potter
Preservation:
A Chickamauga Memorial: The Establishment of America’s First Civil War National Military Park by Timothy B. Smith
Fighting the Second Civil War by Bob Zeller
The Golden Age of Battlefield Preservation: The Decade of the 1890's and the Establishment of America's First Five Military Parks by Timothy B. Smith
Slavery and Reconstruction:
A Just and Lasting Peace: A Documentary History of Reconstruction by John David Smith
A Slave No More: Two Men Who Escaped to Freedom, Including Their Own Narratives of Emancipation by David W. Blight
Embattled Freedom: Journeys through the Civil War’s Slave Refugee Camps by Amy Murrell Taylor
Lincoln's Emancipation: The End of Slavery in America by Allen C. Guelzo
Reconstruction Updated Edition: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877 by Eric Foner
The Dred Scott Case: Its Significance in American Law and Politics by Don E. Fehrenbacher
The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery by Eric Foner
What This Cruel War Was Over: Soldiers, Slavery, and the Civil War by Chandra Manning
Women's Studies:
Amazing Women of the Civil War by Webb Garrison
Brokenburn: The Journal of Kate Stone 1861-1868 edited by John Q. Anderson
Clara Barton: Professional Angel by Elizabeth Brown Pryor
Divided Houses: Gender and the Civil War by Catherine Clinton and Nina Silber
Mary Chesnut's Civil War edited by C. Vann Woodward
Mothers of Invention: Women of the Slaveholding South in the American Civil War by Drew Gilpin Faust
Sarah Morgan: The Civil War Diary of a Southern Woman edited by Charles East
The Women's Fight: The Civil War's Battles for Home, Freedom, and Nation by Thavolia Glymph
They Fought Like Demons: Women Soldiers in the Civil War by De Anne Blanton and Lauren M. Cook
If you are looking for more in-depth research works on the Civil War, be sure to start by checking out the following titles.
- The Official Records of the War of the Rebellion
- The Southern Historical Society Papers
- Military Order of the Loyal Legions of the United States War Papers
- Confederate Veteran
- Bates' History of the Pennsylvania Volunteers
- The Bachelder Papers
- Archive.org for regimental histories
Start learning about the Civil War by clicking here.
