Pictorial Field Book of the Civil War - Vol. 1

Before the rise of "professional" academic history, there were devoted Brahmins of a literary bent (George Bancroft, Francis Parkman, and Henry Adams) and skilled researchers and chroniclers, men such as J. Thomas Scharf of Maryland history fame and--the most prolific of all--Ben Lossing of New York, who, since they made their living by writing history, could rightly be labeled "professional" after all. Every literate history lover in the mid-to-late nineteenth century knew of Lossing and his work; he may not have been academically trained, but he knew where to look for evidence, did the digging we would expect him to do, and wrote with a flair for the dramatic. In his Pictorial Field Book of the Civil War, Lossing takes the same "on-the-scene approach" to the Civil War--visiting the sites of battles and other events, making sketches of these places, talking with people about their experiences--that earned his earlier Pictorial Field Book of the Revolution and Pictorial Book of the War of 1812 a wide and enthusiastic readership.