The Civil War book series chronicles in great detail the American Civil War. Published by Time-Life Books, the 28-volume series was sequentially released in the US and Canada between 1983 and 1987 as bi-monthly direct-to-consumer (DTC) installments to series subscribers. Some titles focused on a specific topic, such as the blockade, and spies, but most volumes concentrated on the battles and campaigns, presented in chronological order.
Release overview Each volume in the series, including the "Master Index", was 176 pages in length, heavily illustrated and with pictorial essays on specific topics within each volume and came standard without a dust jacket. Executed in hardcover, each volume was bound in silvery-gray padded faux leather, the cover endowed with in deep blue printed text imprints, and heavily embossed with Civil War symbology with an oval shaped illustration glued on.
Like their book series had been in the 1960s and 1970s most volumes were written by historians and/or experts of repute on the subject matter at hand, and for which Time-Life Books had hitherto been renowned. However, there were also three (four if one is to include volume 28, the "Master Index") volumes written by committee, "The Editors of Time-Life Books", namely volumes 3, 8 and 18 as explained by series researcher Harris Andrews in a December 1998 C-SPAN interview, "[w]e frequently would hire modern historians as consultants on the volume to give us a guide to speed up our [editing] process so that we knew what we could cut away, material that we didn't necessarily want to go to." While having already employed the content creation format on an occasional basis for some outings in earlier book series, Time-Life Books would henceforth employ this format as the more regular content creation template for all their subsequent book series afterwards, which notably included the later below specified Voices of the Civil War complementary series as well. Military historian Colonel John R. Elting in particular was a Time-Life Books consulting regular as he had fulfilled that function for several outings in the publisher's military history series, such as the World War II and The Third Reich series.
Because of it being a USA-specific topic, no international editions of the main series and/or the hereafter mentioned spin-offs are known to have been published in translation by either Time-Life itself or licensed others. Still, interested parties in other language territories were offered the opportunity to acquire the original American version via mail through their nearest Time-Life Books subsidiary, as was commonplace for the company at the time, typically by taking out a series subscription.
+ Volume titles of The Civil War Title Authors/Consultants Volume Year published ISBN Brother Against Brother - The War Begins William C. Davis 01 1983 First Blood - Fort Sumter to Bull Run William C. Davis 02 1983 The Blockade - Runners and Raiders John R. Elting, James J. Robertson, William A. Frassatino, Les Jensen, Michael McAffee, Clark G. Reynolds, James P. Shenton 03 1983 The Road to Shiloh - Early Battles in the West David Nevin 04 1983 Forward to Richmond - McClellan's Peninsular Campaign Ronald H. Bailey 05 1983 Decoying the Yanks - Jackson's Valley Campaign Champ Clark 06 1984 Confederate Ordeal - The Southern Home Front Steve A. Channing 07 1984 Lee Takes Command - From Seven Days to Second Bull Run John R. Elting, William A. Frassatino, Les Jenson, Michael McAffee, James P. Shenton 08 1984 The Coastal War - Chesapeake Bay to Rio Grande Peter M. Chaitin 09 1984 Tenting Tonight - The Soldier's Life James I. Robertson Jr. 10 1984 The Bloodiest Day - The Battle of Antietam Ronald H. Bailey 11 1984 War on the Mississippi - Grant's Vicksburg Campaign Jerry Korn 12 1985 Rebels Resurgent - Fredericksburg to Chancellorsville William K. Goolrick 13 1985 Twenty Million Yankees - The Northern Home Front Donald Dale Jackson 14 1985 Gettysburg - The Confederate High Tide Champ Clark 15 1985 The Struggle for Tennessee - Tupelo to Stones River James Street Jr. 16 1985 The Fight For Chattanooga - Chickamauga to Missionary Ridge Jerry Korn 17 1985 Spies, Scouts and Raiders - Irregular Operations John R. Elting, William A. Frassatino, Les Jenson, Michael McAffee 18 1985 Battles For Atlanta - Sherman Moves East Ronald H. Bailey 19 1985 The Killing Ground - Wilderness to Cold Harbor Gregory Jaynes 20 1986 Sherman's March - Atlanta to the Sea David Nevin 21 1986 Death in the Trenches - Grant at Petersburg William C. Davis 22 1986 War on the Frontier - The Trans-Mississippi West Alvin M. Josephy Jr.23 1986 The Shenandoah in Flames - The Valley Campaign of 1864 Thomas A. Lewis 24 1987 Pursuit to Appomattox - The Last Battles Jerry Korn 25 1987 The Assassination - Death of the President Champ Clark 26 1987 The Nation Reunited - War's Aftermath Richard W. Murphy 27 1987 Master Index - An Illustrated Guide The Editors of Time-Life Books 28 1987
Excerpt A 432-page excerpt hardcover in dust jacket variant edition, its chapter organization roughly following the series title order as released, was concurrently published in 1990 by two educational publishers, Prentice Hall and Silver Burdett Press, as "Brother against brother, Time-Life Books History of the Civil War" ( respectively), as well as by Time-Life itself in a different dust jacket for the general populace under the same title (), which was subsequently reprinted as "The Time-Life History of the Civil War" by Barnes & Noble Books in 1995 (), featuring a newly designed dust jacket. Renowned Civil War historian James M. McPherson (who had not contributed to the main series) provided the foreword for the excerpt edition.
Home market reprints The series has been well received at the time as was confirmed by contemporary Deputy Editor Harris Andrews (who started out his Time-Life career by serving on the series as a credited "Researcher") when he stated as late in the aforementioned December 1998 interview that it was an "extremely" popular series and "the best series we ever produced and it is still selling very well", estimating that series volumes had by then already sold in the "millions" of copies. It explained why the series remained in print for well over a decade with its subsequent identical reprint runs in the late-1980s/mid-1990s, which were the ones also intended for dissemination abroad,From the copyright notifications on the contemporary European reply cards distributed by the Time-Life Books B.V. Amsterdam branch. albeit untranslated. It were the individual title reprints that also became available in bookstores from 1991 onward after Time-Life Books had added the regular bookstore retail channel to their hitherto traditional DTC-only channel as distribution means for their publications. Unlike those of several other Time-Life Books series (including the hereafter referenced Echoes of Glory and Voices of the Civil War series), these bookstore copies were not furnished with dust jackets.
In the early 2000s, three volumes of the main series were reissued in brown faux leatherette as otherwise unaltered installments by The History Channel Club under a full license from Time-Life Books then-owner Direct Holdings Global L.L.C. for their American History Archives deluxe book series collection, which dealt with the overall history of the USA. These volumes concerned "A Nation Divided: The Civil War Begins" (2003, , = volume 01), "Gettysburg: The Tide of War Turns" (2003, , = volume 15), and "Antietam, The Bloodiest Day" (2004, , = volume 11), the two 2003 releases even featuring the same cover illustrations. These hardback versions are relatively rare on the used-book markets and the "Antietam" title in particular commands a higher after-market price than its Time-Life progenitor does. The other collection volumes dealing with the Civil War do not have a Time-Life Books pedigree, but were drawn from the plethora of Osprey Publishing releases. This was only the third, but also the penultimate, time that proprietary Civil War book titles were licensed by Time-Life Books to outside third-party publishers, after the two prior, 1996, occasions for Echoes of Glory and the concurrent 2003 "Great photographs of the Civil War" title, as hereafter specified.
Spinoffs The series' success has enticed Time-Life to delve much deeper into the subject of the American Civil War with follow-up releases as companion, or addendum, series, becoming arguably Time-Life's most revisited topic in the process. These included the preceding Collector's Library of the Civil War (1981–1985, 30 volumes, ), a series consisting of smaller-sized deluxe, gilt-edged facsimile faux-leather bound reproductions of memoirs written by Civil War participants, actually already started before the main series and therefore conceivably the de facto source publication as editor Andrews considered it himself in effect. Pursuant the inaugural release of the main series, two proprietary book series, Echoes of Glory (1991, 3-volume box set, see below) and Voices of the Civil War (1995–98, 18 volumes, see below), had followed suit. Aside from these, Time-Life (re)issued The Civil War: A Narrative – 40th Anniversary Edition in 1999–2000, hard on the heels of their own Voices of the Civil War. This re-release was an illustrated commemorative version of Shelby Foote's magnum opus (14 volumes – the original three-volume work was, save for a few maps, not illustrated).
Additionally, three stand-alone titles were released by Time-Life Books of which two were summarizing, general histories of the war, and, like Voices and A Narrative, making again use of the considerable pictorial archive the publisher had accumulated for the main series, including their own commissioned maps. The first of the general histories concerned "War between Brothers" (, 192-page hardback without dust jacket), released in 1996 as part of their educational six-volume mini-series The American Story, that dealt with selected highlights of US history, and which was followed in 2000 by "An Illustrated History of the Civil War: Images of an American Tragedy" (, 454-page hardback in dust jacket – accompanied by a near-concurrent renamed reissue of Echoes of Glory, see also below), a truly standalone title as that title was not a part of a series. A third, equally truly standalone title was more specific and concerned the "1863: Turning Point of the Civil War – Chancellorsville/Gettysburg/Vicksburg/Chickamauga/Chattanooga" book (1998, , 320-page hardback in dust jacket), which focused on the major battles fought in that pivotal year of the war and where McPherson's aforementioned foreword was reproduced.
In late-2000 Time-Life started with the release of The Photographic History of the Civil War series (), a facsimile reprint edition of the original The Review of Reviews Co. publication from 1911 and like the prior A Narrative, intended as a commemorative 90th anniversary release. Like the original, the series was slated to become ten volumes long, but its release was cut short after only two volumes were actually released, "The Opening Battles" () and "Two Years of Grim War" (),The third "The Decisive Battles" volume had already received its , but did not get the opportunity to become released. due to the cessation of the Time-Life Books, Inc. division as a dedicated book publisher in the opening months of the following year. These two Time-Life iterations are exceptionally rare and extremely hard to come by on used-book markets.