February 12, 2001 Baton Rouge, Louisiana

The United States Civil War Center and BookPage, co-publishers of the quarterly "Civil War Book Review," today released their Spring 2001 issue. "Civil War Book Review" is the only journal in America devoted exclusively to reviews and features about books that examine the antebellum, Civil War, and Reconstruction periods.

Counting among its past contributors such notable historians and authors as William C. Davis, James I. Robertson, Lewis P. Simpson, Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Winston Groom, Tom Wicker, and the late C. Vann Woodward, "Civil War Book Review" is respected by scholars and lay readers alike for the seriousness of its reviews and criticism.

The Spring 2001 issue includes:

** University of the South historian John C. Willis’s review of Edward L. Ayers’s "Valley of the Shadow: The Eve of War," which offers thousands of pages of primary source material from Augusta County, Virginia, and Franklin County, Pennsylvania. Willis, the recipient of the Mississippi Historical Society’s 2001 McLemore Prize, walks the reader through the unique book-CD format of "Valley of the Shadow."

** Custer scholar and Reagan Presidential Library curator John P. Langellier’s examination of the journals and reminiscences of two Michigan cavalrymen who fought under George Custer.

** Southern history scholar and LBJ Library archivist T. Michael Parrish’s appraisal of John Moretta’s biography of William Pitt Ballinger, a unionist lawyer in Texas who turned secessionist.

** James D. Hardy Jr.’s review-essay on Stephen Ambrose’s "Nothing Like It in the World" and Charles Royster’s "The Fabulous History of the Dismal Swamp Company." Hardy is associate dean of Louisiana State University’s Honors College.

** Noah Andre Trudeau’s review of historian A. Wilson Greene’s "Breaking the Backbone of the Rebellion," an account of the Petersburg campaign. Trudeau, who has published five books on the Civil War, works for National Public Radio in Washington, D.C.

Among the two dozen other reviews and features included in the Spring 2001 "Civil War Book Review" are reviews of fiction and children’s titles, novelist David Madden’s reflection on Karl Marx’s Civil War journalism, an interview with historian Alice Fahs about popular literature from the Civil War period, and a special section that looks at three recent history-mystery novels.

"Civil War Book Review" is available by subscription for $16 annually, and may be purchased at newsstands and bookstores nationwide. Complete contents of each 48-page issue also are available online, at . The www.cwbr.com website also offers full search capability for archived back issues and a feature that allows for reviews to be forwarded to friends.

For information on editorial aspects of "Civil War Book Review," contact Morgan Knull at 225.578.3553 or . Inquiries about advertising and subscriptions may be directed to Julia Steele at 800.726.4242 x15 or .