Published by: Ryan Place Publishers, Fort Worth, 1996, $11.95

This volume is part of the "Civil War Campaigns and Commanders Series", under the general editorship of Grady McWhiney. The series aims at providing "brief, lively, and authoritative books" that are "inexpensive and accurate" and "readable in a sitting." Judging from this volume, the series deserves a close look by any Civil War buff, and particularly by any wargamer.

Fourteen titles are listed to date. Some deal with major battles or campaigns -- Antietem, the Wilderness, Chickamauga -- and others with fairly arcane topics -- the Saltville Massacre, and Confederate Indians. There is a strong naval focus, with volumes on Raphael Semmes and the ALABAMA, and on the MONITOR and VIRGINIA, as well as the present volume. There is also an emphasis on Texas and the west, with five volumes on the trans-Mississippi.

COTTONCLADS! may well be readable in a sitting -- it has about seventy pages of actual text, interspersed with about forty pages of maps and illustrations. A good part of the text consists of biographical sketches of military and naval leaders, with accompanying photographs.

There are ten maps, ranging from the Anaconda Plan to three detailed views of the Confederate assault on Galveston. There are excellent charts comparing the artillery pieces employed, and also the major combatant ships, as well as line drawings of two of the Rebel cottonclads. Supplementing the text are orders of battle, technical data and history of ships involved in the campaign, an annotated bibliography, and an index.

I enjoyed reading the book, which took about two hours. More importantly, I am now trying to decide whether the battle of Galveston might be better gamed with 1:600 or with 15mm scale miniatures. Anyone who feels up to constructing 15mm models of half a dozen ships could have a great game of ramming and boarding action; this was an engagement in which small arms fire weighed at least as heavily as artillery. Meanwhile the 42nd Massachusetts is pinned down on the docks ashore while the Texans close in . . . .

The biggest problem in constructing a game may be in reproducing commanders' psychology, e.g. the false rumor, which partly led to the Union withdrawal, that one of the Confederate ships was an ironclad. The battle of Galveston might make an excellent convention game, with a dozen inadequately briefed commanders producing lots of confusion.

This is a useful volume.

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