(Part 2) Best products from r/USCivilWar

I’d highly suggest you read his memoirs..

This biography by McDonough was very good.
https://www.amazon.com/William-Tecumseh-Sherman-Service-Country/dp/0393354202

A favorite of mine that I have read several times over is Landscape Turned Red by Stephen W. Sears. It's about Antietam and I always have a hard time putting it down.

This is a good one:

https://www.amazon.com/Sergeant-Company-Sharpshooter-Regiment-1861-1865/dp/093552326X

The Civil War Diary of Wyman S. White: First Sergeant of Co. F, 2nd United States Sharpshooter Regiment, 1861 - 1865.

I kind of liked this one: http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0439668182

Steven Sodergren's "The Army of the Potomac" covers the last year or so of the campaign, but I prefer it because it focuses on the trench warfare aspect. Lee had to resort to prepared positions due to his inferiority in numbers. When Grant couldn't dislodge the Confederates he would simply pull back and try another end run. There are a lot of books condemning Grant's strategy, but I don't know what more he could have had given the situation and Lee's counter-moves.

[Doctors in Gray] (http://www.amazon.com/Doctors-Gray-Confederate-Medical-Service/dp/0807118567/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1377656377&sr=8-1&keywords=doctors+in+gray) and [Doctors in Blue] (http://www.amazon.com/Doctors-Blue-Medical-History-Union/dp/0807121053/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1377656377&sr=8-2&keywords=doctors+in+gray)

The more militaristic and expansionist aspects of pro-slavery politics even spread beyond the official military policy of the Federal government to embrace private military ventures like the filibusterers of the 1850s - e.g., William Walker - and attempts at bully diplomacy in which the United States pressured other countries to cede territory in Central America and the Caribbean destined to become slave states. (The long Cuban controversy and the Ostend Manifesto of 1854 are a good demonstration of the latter.) Our memory of the Knights of the Golden Circle is tainted by their own self-aggrandizement and a bundle of conspiracy theories, but the fact of their existence - and their commitment to the idea of a slave-holding empire ringing the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean - is revealing enough.

As many Southerners understood, slavery required expansion in order to survive. The chattel slavery economy did not naturally produce the demographic explosion necessary to sustain its political life in an era when the Northern population was growing exponentially in just that way. Slave-grown cotton sapped the soil, and new agricultural vistas for slavery's consumption were not just desirable but fast becoming necessary by mid-century. Slaves themselves reproduced at a rate sufficient to ensure that they would not die out as a people, but the political and geographic preconditions necessary for the institution's survival were forever uncertain.

Northerners understood this, too. The entire raison d'etre of the Republican Party was to establish a "cordon of freedom" around the institution, which anti-slavery Northerners believed would starve it into submission. (James Oakes' book The Scorpion's Sting: Antislavery and the Coming of the Civil War makes this point quite well.) Southern expansionism was politically palatable to Northerners as long as it was paired with non-slavery expansionism (e.g., the acquisition of Oregon alongside Texas). But the moment it became clear that the acquisition of new territory was not actually a bi-sectional affair, support collapsed. See, for example, widespread opposition in the North to the Mexican War and the Ostend Manifesto.

I got The Black Flower by Howard Bahr for my dad for christmas by recommendation from someone else.
Apparently this guy writes really great Civil War fiction. I haven't ready any of his work, but my dad was really exited to get to read it.

As an introduction that is both serious and readable, I don't believe even McPherson beats Catton.

Huh, that's weird I'm seeing it now.

ETA: I had still had the page up that I was looking at last night and it and the kindle edition isn't on it, apparently it depends on how you search for it? http://www.amazon.com/Landscape-Turned-Red-Battle-Antietam/dp/B004PGFWGW/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1463884079&sr=1-2

I've heard this is a good book on the subject...

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1594630917/ref=nosim/nationalreviewon

Doesn't deal exclusively with the Civil War, but does focus on re-enactment culture.

Thomas R. Flagel's History Buff's Guide to the Civil War and History Buff's Guide to the Civil War: The best, the worst, the largest, and the most lethal top ten rankings of the Civil War

Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln is a personal fav. Focuses on the politics of the war and Lincoln, both of which are a good lens on the war and what came before/after.

I wrote a paper for my undergrad Civil War history course, using that collection. I got the book from my university library. Here is an amazon link to it:

http://www.amazon.com/Civil-letters-George-Washington-Whitman/dp/0822303310

The book, The War of Confederate Captain Henry T. Owen, follows the exploits of my relative, Captain Owen, through Pickett's Charge and beyond. Here's the Amazon link:

The War of Confederate Captain Henry T. Owen https://www.amazon.com/dp/1585499692/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_tai_uhMsybX41MF11

I get zero royalties, btw. I just think it's cool to have an ancestor who fought in, and survived, Pickett's Charge.

Also a HS US teacher here: I don't think you know the Civil War until you have read those books. For me it goes quick because it is written in almost novel form. Mr. Foote was not a historian, he was a novelist and it really comes out in the books. There aren't a lot of footnotes for example. To me it comes across as a story. I have been picking it up and putting it down for about 10 years now. I can't sit and drown in Civil War for that long. I need some WWII or some fiction.
He also has broken some chapters out, like the Gettysburg chapter into its own book. Its the chapter, just in a book.
Stars in Their Courses : The Gettysburg Campaign, June-July 1863
or The Beleaguered City: The Vicksburg Campaign, December 1862-July 1863