Year In Review: 2006

It’s time for my second annual best-of list for 2006.  These are always tough calls so take them with a grain of salt.  Obviously I could go on and on but this list hits on a few of the books that kept me out of trouble in 2006.    [Note: these books were not necessarily published in the past year.]

Best Blog: This is one of the easiest choices and it goes to Tim Greenman’s Walking the Berkshires.  Tim describes his site as an “eclectic weaving of human narrative, natural history, and conservation science with the Berkshire and Litchfield Hills as both its backdrop and point of departure. I am interested in how land and people, past and present manifest in the broader landscape and social fabric of our communities.”  The site is entertaining and educational.  Thanks Tim!

Favorite History Book of 2006: Raymond Arsenault, Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice (Oxford University Press, 2006).

Best Overall Civil War Military History: Steven E. Woodworth, Nothing But Victory: The Army of the Tennessee, 1861-1865 (Knopf, 2005). 

Best Biography:  Joan Cashin, First Lady of the Confederacy: Varina Davis’s Civil War (Harvard University Press, 2006).   

Best Confederate Study: Armstead L. Robinson, Bitter Fruits of Bondage: The Demise of Slavery and the Collapse of the Confederacy, 1861-1865 (University of Virginia Press, 2005) 

Best Union Study: Jennifer Weber, Copperheads: The Rise and Fall of Lincoln’s Opponents in the North (Oxford University Press, 2006).

Best Slavery Study: David Brion Davis, Inhuman Bondage: The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New World (Oxford University Press, 2006). 

Best Memory Study: James and Lois Horton eds, Slavery and Public History: The Tough Stuff of American Memory (The New Press, 2006). 

Best Edited Collection: Gary W. Gallagher, The Shenandoah Valley Campaign of 1864 (University of North Carolina Press, 2006). 

Best Social History: Jonathan Dean Sarris, A Separate Civil War: Communities in Conflict in the Mountain South (University of Virginia Press, 2006). 

Best Myth Buster: Roger L. Ransom, The Confederate States of America: What Might Have Been (Norton, 2005). 

Best Gettysburg Book: Kent M. Brown, Retreat From Gettysburg: Lee, Logistics, and the Pennsylvania Campaign (University of North Carolina Press, 2005).

Some good things to look forward to in the new year are studies by William Freehling, Chandra Manning, and Nelson Lankford.  Congratulations to the winners.  Awards are in the mail.
 

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4 comments… add one
  • Marc Ferguson Dec 30, 2006 @ 13:09

    Kevin,
    This is a great book list, and, more importantly, thanks for turning me on to Tim’s great blog.

    Marc

  • SGT Will Hickox Dec 30, 2006 @ 12:49

    I’m currently deep into “Nothing but Victory” by Woodworth and I mostly agree with you that it’s terrific. If only there were maps–then it would be a classic.

  • University Update Dec 30, 2006 @ 10:05

    Year In Review: 2006

  • GreenmanTim Dec 30, 2006 @ 9:23

    A marvelous list, Kevin. Deeply humbled to be headlining such a fine collection. Thanks

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