http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/21/business/21libraries.html?em&ex=1185249600&en=91c86ccdf44acc31&ei=5087

I’m making my start at reviews here:

http://wonderworldofbooks.blogspot.com/

Yeah, I’m real selective when it comes to Gettysburg books. The last one I got was Eric & JD’s groundbreaking work on JEB’s ride. Bradley Gottfried’s new map book looks compelling, especially to one who doesn’t own Imhoof’s Day 2 work. Also might hunt for the Gettysburg portion of the OR while at Mansfield.

Mike

newspapers: First, concentrate on soldier accounts. Their content will likely contain a good deal of misinformation about stuff outside their own observation. What they observe, however, (accounts of their own unit’s action, etc) is pretty solid, IMO. The earlier the battle, the more accounts per capita, as everyone scrambles to tell the home folks what thier ‘first battle’ is like.

Correspondent accounts are not so hot, IMO. There are a few I rely on, but for the most part, gimme the soldier accounts.

I eventually want to take all of the soldier accounts, organize them by brigade, juxtapose Union and Confederate accounts where they fought against each other, and publish that. Way down on the list, but I think it would be very interesting. However, the big problem right now is lack of Reb accounts vis a vis the Federal ones.

A Nat Tribune collection would be good, too, but I find the NT to be a little too heavy on the “old soldier” story kind of distortion after the fact. Too much romance bleeding into some of those accounts.

The soldier accounts have an immediacy that is really moving, IMO.

If I had a blog, see, I could publish one letter a week.:) Of course, right now, I have hardcopy prints of the microfilm, so that means a lot of transcribing. I have not had much luck with OCR scanning of these things – image quality old newspapers on Microfilm is not exactly first rate.

Fortunately, Susan loves books as much as I do. It’s the saving grace.

Eric

Dave:

I haven’t had much time lately for off-line research, but one area I hope to really dig into is newspaper accounts. And there are lots of them. Mike Peters has been forwarding me a number of transcriptions from New York state papers. All of these accounts I’ve been looking at are remarkable in the uniformity of their misinformation!

I’m not very organized with respect to the papers. I have lots of PDF files, but can’t figure out how to print them in an enlarged format so I can read them. I’m sure it’s a simple Acrobat function. Also, I’m a little distrustful of transcriptions – I want to see a picture of the paper itself.

One project I’m considering is putting together all the National Tribune articles that pertain to BR1, kind of like what Sauers did with Gettysburg. Maybe combine it with accounts from the SHSP (I have all those in digital) and Confederate Veteran. Of course, I may just do that as part of the website that still is no closer to completion.

Mike K: I’ve been trying to convince my wife to do the same thing with our living room.

Mike P: It’s not books in general that’s a problem, it’s Gettysburg books. No matter how many Gettysburg books most of us have, it’s probably way too many! BTW, I won’t be at Mansfield this year – I’m making a trip to Carlisle and Antietam at that time.

Eric: At least you’re “allowed” to spread your books thoughout the house. Mine are limited to my home office. I’ve got one 8 foot section above the cases along one wall left, and I’ll be putting that shelf up this weekend. And I’ll be partially blocking the cold air return.

Steve: Dents are about the most we can hope for!

You beat my collection hands down. There is definitely something about books though. Electronic versions are ok, but I have never been a able to sit down and read something online. I usually end up printing it out. There is just something about paper!

@Eric… my wife and I have been talking about getting rid of our dining room furniture. It’s old and we never really use the room. So out will go the furniture and in comes some bookshelves, reading chair and such. A lot of wall space there … :-)

Thanks for the great post. And kudos on the frugality of the purchases.

Mike

Focus does help. A lot. I have something like 2000k ACW books, and another 2000 general fiction, military history, (WWII East Front and Napoleonics are big collections) but I have greatly slowed the book-buying pace.

Why? Chickamauga. Now my greatest thrill does not come from finding books, but finding new archival accounts of the battle. So I go to Libraries, sit in reading rooms, and look at old papers. When I find something cool I get a little dizzy. If I hear about a source in a bibliography, I get pretty obsessive about tracking it down.

Recently I found a 20+ page description of the fight by an Lt in the 84th Indiana. Full of detail, brutally honest (sick colonel, cowardly major) and never used, as far as I can tell.

This means that while I buy many fewer books a year, now, I have about 8 linear feet of binders full of xeroxes of these things. As you get deeper into Bull Run, you will see what I mean, if you are not already there. Have you started on letters home int he newspapers, yet?

Dave Powell

Don’t have an accurate count here of just how many I have, but they are all over the place in the house, and like you, I know I will not get to read them all, but am going to try to put a dent into as many I have here before my time on Earth is done. :)

Regards from the Garden State,

Steve