The handful of Civil War enthusiasts among our readers will have much to interest them this fall. David J. Eicher’s The Longest Night: A Military History of the Civil War (Simon & Schuster, $40.00) is full of stately sentences that begin with phrases like “At dawn on the morning of September 17, McClellan had some 75,316 effectives arrayed as follows.—” On Campaign With the Army of the Potomac: The Civil War Journal of Theodore Ayrault
Dodge (Cooper Square Press, $29.95) stands out from other soldiers’ diaries because the author, who had interrupted his European education to enlist, went on to become one of America’s greatest military historians. Images From the Storm (Free Press, $50.00) is the best book for browsers: It contains 300 detailed color drawings of Civil War scenes, most made from life, by Pvt. Robert Knox Sneden, a Union cartographer.