The Illustrated Directory of Weapons, Uniforms and Equipment of the Civil War [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

This is a great reference book. The pictures are excelent. Great overview of the uniforms, accoutrements, weapons, and such of the different armies throughout the war. I especially liked the individual Regiment pages with illustrations showing what a soldier might have looked like in a given regiment.

Miller did pretty good, but he loses a star here for his biased writing. In the book, Confederate General Braxton Bragg is touted as a man who, owning a Bible, probably didn't read it, given the shape of his troops, while Sherman's atrocities are overlooked, and he is praised as a man whose "place among American commanders remains secure," and Miller speaks with surprise that he is controversial, since it's been "over a century and a quarter" since he burned and pillaged the South. Anyways, this is a great resource for reenactors and anyone interested in militaria of the War Between the States.

This book is packed with a lot of information and many illustrations and photographs, and a lot of it is good information. Unfortunately there are also many errors, mislabeled captions and even incomplete captions where they ran out of space on the page! Other than careful observation, one way I discovered this is that many of the same photos and illustrations appear with proper captions in "The Fighting Men of The Civil War" by William C. Davis (ISBN-13: 978-0806130606), a superior albeit coffee-table-sized book. Anyway, as fay as this David Miller (ed.) book is concerned, I would not make it a center piece of my civil war book collection. Having said that, its small size can make a handy read (if you take it with a grain of salt), and there are some good color uniform illustrations.

The authors have made this just the book that most of us expect and would like to see. The first 227 pages cover the uniforms worn during the Civil War. These pages are subdivided between uniforms worn by Federal soldiers and Confederate soldiers. Each subdivision is preceded by an overview which includes headgear, insignia, and basic equipment.

Next come 184 pages on arms and munitions. This includes the usual surveys of hand weapons and artillery but also includes information on supply trains, etc. The breadth of the authors may be seen in the inclusion of a rocket launcher among Union artillery pieces or a Vandenburgh volley gun among Confederate artillery. (This volley gun looks somewhat like a Gattling gun but with about 85 barrels.)

This gun has an interesting history. Origen Vandenburgh was a general in the New York State militia. When he failed to sell his gun to the United States, he went to England where production was begun. But Vandenburgh failed to sell the gun to the British. Somehow, whether Vandenburgh knew it or not, a copy of the gun was sold to the Confederates. Each 12.7mm barrel had to be loaded between volleys that were fired simultaneously.

The last 140 or so pages contain naval uniforms, weapons, and artifacts, flags, and miscellaneous artifacts including prisoner of war handcrafts and telegraphic equipment.

Not any book can contain all the information that one might like to have. This book lacks any discussion of naval vessels in order to concentrate on other topics. Personally I would like to have seen an index at the end of the book to help me out. But no book has it all, and I can get by with the clear chapter headings that are used.

I did have a concern about a possible bias on the part of the authors. Confederate General Beauregard was chastized by the authors for his flamboyant dress. "It is a sad reflection" that he and some other Confederate officers "worried so much about their own clothing ... when their soldiers had barely enoughclothing to cover themselves with, nor shoes to walk in." I know of no other valid criticism by a Confederate soldier of Maj Gen PGT Beauregard. Is it because his soldiers found inspiration in his flambouyant uniform just as Custer's did?

Uniforms were confusing and changed during the Civil War. Northern zouave units and Southern zouave units would be indiscernable just as much today as they were during the Civil War. Some uniforms changed due to the need for conformity and some due to economic reasons. Ulysses Grant cared little for the formality of dress. Robert E Lee dressed as a Confederate colonel.

What one would expect from an illustrated directory is plenty of good information. What one would like to see is all that information as carefully organized as it is.