"Gettysburg: The Confederate High Tide" is the volume in the Time-Life Civil War series devoted to the most famous battle in American history. Author Champ Clark does a marvelous job of both providing the basic information for understanding the strategy and tactics of the battle as well as providing intriguing details for those more intimately familiar with the story of Gettysburg. For example, there is a photograph of Dan Sickle's shattered leg bone that was amputated on the second day of the battle and which he visited at the Army Medical Museum in Washington periodically for the rest of his life.

The book is divided into five chapters. "A Hard Road North" covers the movements of the Army of Northern Virginia and the Army of the Potomac north from Fredericksburg to begin converge on the town of Gettysburg on the last night of June in 1863. A very detailed map of the troop movements is provided. This chapter ends with a look at "Soldiering on Horseback," which looks at the trappings of the cavalry, including a McClellan saddle. "The Push to Seminary Ridge" tells of the first day of battle, July 1st, as John Buford's dismounted Union cavalry held off the advancing troops of Henry Heath's troops along the Chambersburg Pike. Most readers know of the strategic importance of getting the high ground at this battle, and Clark covers all of the key moves in this fatal dance. In this chapter particularly, Clark does a nice job of combining the military maneuvers with fascinating human elements of that day, from the stories of local civilians John Burns and Jennie Wade, to the battlefield friendship forged between Union General Francis Barlow and Confederate General John Gordon, and the story of Lt. Bayard Wilkinson, who commanded a Union battery and amputated his own leg after being hit by a shell.

"Through the Valley of Death" deals with the action on July 2nd, which begins with General Dan Sickle's idiotic redeployment of his III Corps off of Cemetery Ridge and ends with the defense of Little Round Top. The latter, with the pivotal role played by Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain's 20th Maine, is one of the centerpieces of the film "Gettysburg." The consequences of Sickle's blunder is covered in "Fury in the Peach Orchard," which we tend to remember up here in the Northland because General Winfield Scott Hancock ended up plugging the massive hole in the Union line created by Sickles with the 1st Minnesota regiment, whose 262 men attacked an entire Confederate brigade to buy time, at the cost of 82 percent of its men. This chapter ends with "An Artist's Portrayal of the Battle," which looks at the works of Peter Frederick Rothermel, who was commissioned by the state of Pennsylvania in 1866 to do a series of paintings of the battle.

Before the book's final chapter, we get "A Panoramic View of the Last Charge," a 400-foot cyclorama by French artist Paul Philippoteaux recreating Pickett's charge (If you visit the Gettysburg Battlefield, it is a must-see). Of course the high watermark of the Confederacy is covered in "'In Hell or Glory,'" which concludes with "Images of the Aftermath," taken by Mathew Brady's team a couple of weeks after the battle. However, the final two-page spread of the book offers the simple elegance of Abraham Lincoln's handwritten version of "The Gettysburg Address" super imposed over a photographic enlargement of Lincoln about to sit down after giving the most famous speech in American history.

I love Dave Barry and I loved this book! Intelligent and witty. Quirky and unusual. Great illustrations too.

In the usual CAMPAIGN format, but double sized, this book follows the whole Gettysburg campaign, starting with the Army of Northern Virginia "invasion" up to their retreat.

There are the standard "3D" maps showing the actual battle, day by day, and *lots* of period photographs, as well as modern day drawings.

For modellers (my case!) there is plenty of material for uniforms, weaponry, and dioramas. Wargamers also get some attention.

I heartily recommend all of the Civil War Osprey Campaign books: Antietam, Fredericksburg, Manassas, and so on!

"Gettysburg: The Confederate High Tide" is the volume in the Time-Life Civil War series devoted to the most famous battle in American history. Author Champ Clark does a marvelous job of both providing the basic information for understanding the strategy and tactics of the battle as well as providing intriguing details for those more intimately familiar with the story of Gettysburg. For example, there is a photograph of Dan Sickle's shattered leg bone that was amputated on the second day of the battle and which he visited at the Army Medical Museum in Washington periodically for the rest of his life.

The book is divided into five chapters. "A Hard Road North" covers the movements of the Army of Northern Virginia and the Army of the Potomac north from Fredericksburg to begin converge on the town of Gettysburg on the last night of June in 1863. A very detailed map of the troop movements is provided. This chapter ends with a look at "Soldiering on Horseback," which looks at the trappings of the cavalry, including a McClellan saddle. "The Push to Seminary Ridge" tells of the first day of battle, July 1st, as John Buford's dismounted Union cavalry held off the advancing troops of Henry Heath's troops along the Chambersburg Pike. Most readers know of the strategic importance of getting the high ground at this battle, and Clark covers all of the key moves in this fatal dance. In this chapter particularly, Clark does a nice job of combining the military maneuvers with fascinating human elements of that day, from the stories of local civilians John Burns and Jennie Wade, to the battlefield friendship forged between Union General Francis Barlow and Confederate General John Gordon, and the story of Lt. Bayard Wilkinson, who commanded a Union battery and amputated his own leg after being hit by a shell.

"Through the Valley of Death" deals with the action on July 2nd, which begins with General Dan Sickle's idiotic redeployment of his III Corps off of Cemetery Ridge and ends with the defense of Little Round Top. The latter, with the pivotal role played by Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain's 20th Maine, is one of the centerpieces of the film "Gettysburg." The consequences of Sickle's blunder is covered in "Fury in the Peach Orchard," which we tend to remember up here in the Northland because General Winfield Scott Hancock ended up plugging the massive hole in the Union line created by Sickles with the 1st Minnesota regiment, whose 262 men attacked an entire Confederate brigade to buy time, at the cost of 82 percent of its men. This chapter ends with "An Artist's Portrayal of the Battle," which looks at the works of Peter Frederick Rothermel, who was commissioned by the state of Pennsylvania in 1866 to do a series of paintings of the battle.

Before the book's final chapter, we get "A Panoramic View of the Last Charge," a 400-foot cyclorama by French artist Paul Philippoteaux recreating Pickett's charge (If you visit the Gettysburg Battlefield, it is a must-see). Of course the high watermark of the Confederacy is covered in "'In Hell or Glory,'" which concludes with "Images of the Aftermath," taken by Mathew Brady's team a couple of weeks after the battle. However, the final two-page spread of the book offers the simple elegance of Abraham Lincoln's handwritten version of "The Gettysburg Address" super imposed over a photographic enlargement of Lincoln about to sit down after giving the most famous speech in American history.

This book, a volume in the Time-Life Civil War collection, is a good basic history of Lincoln's Assassination. As with the other volumes in the Time-Life series, this book has wonderful photographs and images from the Civil War period. I would recommend this book to people with little or no previous reading on Lincoln's assassination.

"The Assassination: Death of the President" is perhaps the most poignant of the Time-Life Civil War Series. Author Champ Clark begins with Lincoln's "Haunted Dream" in early April 1865 of being told the president had been assassinated opposite a photograph of Lincoln taken that February where the glass negative broke during developing. The result is an eloquent beginning to the story of a national tragedy. Clark goes back to 1861 when Lincoln began receiving death threats as soon as he was elected. After sketching the security procedures with which Lincoln was provided, Clark begins the story of John Wilkes Booth and the conspiracy he built. There is also a photo essay on "The Stage-Struck Booths." This first of five chapters establishes of how this book is carefully constructed.

"A Kidnapping Aborted" covers the plan to kidnap Lincoln when he was away from the White house and included some of the "cartes de visties" taken of Booth at the height of his acting career. "Tragedy at Ford's" deals with the April 14th assassination, with photographs of the key people and places involved. This chapter ends with photographs of the clothes Lincoln was wearing and the items he carried that fateful night. "A Night of Tears and Violence" relates the deathbed vigil at Lincoln's side, the attempted assassination of Secretary of State Seward by Lewis Paine, and the flight of Booth. "The Grieving Nation's Long Farewell" is shown in photographs and engravings, including the only known picture of Lincoln after death. "The Harsh Reckoning" deals with both Booth's death as well as the trial and execution of the other conspirators. There is a photo spread of the items Booth carried when he died, forming an ironic counterpart to the earlier pictures of Lincoln's possession. However, the book ends with a photo sequence of the conspirators being hung.

For those who are well versed in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln there is probably nothing new here. But the presentation of the facts, coupled with the use of historic photographs, engravings, and broadsides, makes this one of the finer volumes in the Civil War Series. I do not think I have ever seen as many different illustrations dealing with the assassination as are collected in this volume; for me the most haunting is the picture of the bedroom in which Lincoln died, the pillow still soaked with his blood. Although the focus is clearly on the assassin and his victim, Clark works in the supporting characters with vivid details: one sidebar tells of how Edwin Booth once saved the life of Robert Lincoln when the President's son was accidentally knocked by a crowd onto railroad tracks, while another reprints the actor's anguished letter to the public following the assassination. The collected effect is quite impressive and this is an excellent penultimate volume to this first-rate series.

One of the best things about the Time-Life series on the Civil War is that since it takes over two dozen volumes to tell the story of America's Homeric epic, it can devote an entire book to something like "Stonewall" Jackson's campaign in the Shenandoah Valley. It was this campaign, more than anything else, which made Jackson's reputation as a military genius. The Valley was of great strategic importance, considered the key to Virginia, which was the key to the Confederacy. Not only did it supply food and supplies to the Army of Northern Virginia, any troops in the Valley threatened Washington, D.C. With a small army, never numbering more than 17,000 men, Jackson spent eight months paralyzing McClellan's 120,000 soldiers in the Army of the Potomac and eventually caused 40,000 troops to be diverted from the March on Richmond.

Champ Clark takes the opportunity of this book's focus to detail Jackson's military and personal life up to the start of the Valley Campaign in his first chapter. Subsequent chapters detail the strategic and tactics of Jackson's campaign, including the battles at Kernstown, McDowell, Winchester, Fort Royal, and Port Republic, as well as numerous skirmishes. "Decoying the Yanks" is illustrated with historic photographs, drawings, etchings, and paintings depicting the Valley Campaign, including an ironic photo essay showing the heavily fortified Union positions established around the Federal capital. Whatever the shortcomings of the biographical section on Jackson, which I am certainly in no position to comment upon, this volume does give me a much better sense of Jackson's brilliant campaign in the Valley than I had ever had from the more general histories of the Civil War that I have read.