My recent shopping has been directed at the American Civil War. This was partially as a lead-up to my road trip (see that article in this issue) and also because I found some good sales.

I drove to Rochester to spend the July 4th weekend with some friends and also to see Terry. He and I went over the final draft of the AW army lists and discussed the printing of the first run of VW. It also gave me a chance to visit the local Borders, and Barnes and Noble bookstores. Usually I just browse the shelves looking for interesting titles so that I can order them on-line at Amazon.com or other booksellers. This time, I was delighted to find two books on sale and another worth buying regardless of price.

The first two were discounted to $9.99 each from regular price of $34.99 in B&N. Both were based on the paintings of Mort Kunstler and entitled:

Jackson and Lee: Legends in Gray (ISBN: 1558533338)
The Confederate Spirit (ISBN: 1558538178)

The third book was: Perryville: This Grand Havoc of Battle by Kenneth W. Noe (ISBN: 0813122090).

I had been seeking this book because of my interest in the battle, as it was the basis of my VW 15mm scenario that I wrote about in the last issue. I wanted to see the book before ordering it, and then decided to buy it on the spot at Borders.

Well I found all three books of interest. Mort Kunstler included a lot of his paintings in the two books, and a fellow ACW buff liked them so much that I asked Terry to buy copies of both books for him. Ken Noe does a wonderful job describing the Perryville campaign plus the operations before and after the battle. It is certainly one of those battles that beg the question “what if…”. Ironically, neither commander-in-chief really understood what was happening that day, so little was done to support the engaged forces.

What appeared to be a brilliantly conceived Confederate campaign fizzled without the long hoped for confrontation between the two involved armies.

In addition to buying the two extra copies of the Kunstler books, Terry also kindly brought to Historicon two other books that I had ordered on-line (but could not get delivered outside of the US). Again these were bought to augment my ACW collection of the western theatre. The two books were written by Jim Miles and were part of the “Civil War Campaigns Series”:

Paths to Victory (ISBN: 1558531262)
Piercing the Heartland (ISBN: 1581820755)

The first covers the major battles in Tennessee from Murfreesboro/Stone’s River to John Hood’s disastrous campaign to Nashville. The latter covers from the early operations in the mid-west to the Battles of Shiloh and Perryville. What most appealed to me about these two books were the chapters on touring the battlefields. I read through both the week after Historicon and found them very useful supplements to another book covering many of the major battlefield parks of the ACW. So more thumbs up for recent purchases.