Book Description

This new collection gathers together in a handsome convenient format some of the most instructive, attractive, and historically valuable maps ever made relating to seventeen major Civil War battles. The maps are supplemented throughout with other illustrations, including historically accurate, epic paintings by the celebrated artist Don Troiani. The centerpiece of the collection is a series of pictorial maps by David Greenspan which first appeared on the pages of Bruce Catton's 1960 classic The American Heritage Picture History of the Civil War. These full-color maps combine an artist's vision with the cartographer's discipline. The reader also sees battlefields from the perspective of aerial photographs provided by the U.S. High Altitude Photography Program, which convey battlefield topography in a way rarely available to the Civil War historian. The collection also features maps adapted from the 1959 two-volume West Point Atlas of American Wars, and the West Point Special Collections Library has provided a treasure trove of its historic battle maps, several never before published, which were drawn at the time of the battles or shortly thereafter. They offer us a reopened door on relics of a past which few readers can have known still exists. With its invaluable maps and concise text about each battle, Battle Maps of the Civil War is an important new addition to our understanding of the major campaigns of the war.