Mapping the Civil War: Featuring Rare Maps from the Library of Congress (Library of Congress Classics) [Hardcover]

Christopher Nelson (Author)

Book Description

Series: Library of Congress Classics | Publication Date: October 1992

Featuring rare maps from the Library of Congress. Captions by Brian Pohanka, Foreword by Richard Stephenson. 176 pp., cloth, dj., maps in color, photos. And illus.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

In the early days of the Civil War, generals stumbled about with bad maps or none at all. Soon enough, both sides established topographical corps and engaged cartographers, who produced thousands of field surveys, military maps, nautical charts, and general maps of regions and resources. Wartime needs led to new techniques, such as sunprinting and the use of photographic processes, which made it possible to produce maps quickly and in multiple copies for both military and commercial needs. Nelson tells the general story of wartime mapmaking well, if briefly, but in 12 chapters on individual campaigns he fails to show how maps affected strategy or tactics. Given the richness of the collection in the Library of Congress, it is surprising how few maps are presented here. Mapping the Civil War barely sketches the contours of the vital role maps played in winning the war. For major Civil War collections only.
- Randall M. Miller, St. Joseph's Univ., Philadelphia
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 176 pages
• Publisher: Fulcrum Group Publishing; 1St Edition edition (October 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1563730014
• ISBN-13: 978-1563730016
• Product Dimensions: 10.5 x 8.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,511,657 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

44 of 44 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars A beautiful printing job but just coffee table material., July 25, 1999

By 

White Marlin (Tidewater Virginia) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Mapping the Civil War: Featuring Rare Maps from the Library of Congress (Library of Congress Classics) (Hardcover)

The Forward was the best reading, with interesting historical insights about map makers during the war, but with Chapter One, the book turned into a "one over the world" scale recap of selected battles of the war. The book displayed maps associated with a particular battle, but beyond "pretty" they were useless. I bought the book in the hope that the map reprints could be studied and perhaps compared to the West Point Atlas. But unfortunately, map details are mostly illegible as printed. They present the reader only with a sense of what a CW period map looked like. Fold out maps reproduced with some greater clarity and thus useful detail would have been preferred to the useless reprints of old civil war photographs which added nothing to a book on map making and probably made the book more expensive to produce. Disappointing.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars All Show, Not a Lot of Go..., October 23, 2009

By 

D. S. Thurlow (Alaska) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Mapping the Civil War: Featuring Rare Maps from the Library of Congress (Library of Congress Classics) (Hardcover)

"Mapping the Civil War", by Christopher Nelson with Brian Pohanka, is beautifully formatted and nicely illustrated, but it isn't the history of map-making in the Civil War implied by the title. The book's foreward introduces the topic of how important handmade maps were in a country without standard geodesy products. However, Christopher Nelson's history of the Civil War that follows is unremarkable in content and coverage. There is no sustained attempt to document in detail the importance of maps to the conflict. The volume does contain a nice but surprisingly limited selection of maps, sketches, and photographs from the extensive holdings of the Library of Congress, which are beautifully presented.

"Mapping the Civil War" may be worth a look for the casual reader interested in the Civil War. More serous students of the Civil War can find more detailed content elsewhere.

10 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A must read for all Civil War buffs!, January 13, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Mapping the Civil War: Featuring Rare Maps from the Library of Congress (Library of Congress Classics) (Hardcover)

A well documented volume. Mr. Pohanka and Mr. Nelson have a winner with this volume. Nicely detailed in all aspects. If any one individual has full and accurate knowledge of the Civil War it is Mr. Pohanka. His books come highly recommended!