Touched By Fire, A Photographic Portrait of The Civil War, Volume One

by William C. Davis (Editor)

Presents a thousand photographs of Civil War events with six essays by noted historians

Genres: Civil War, History

331 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1985

About the author

Currently professor of history at Virginia Tech, William C. Davis has written over fifty books, most about the American Civil War. He has won the Jefferson Davis Prize for southern history three times, the Jules F. Landry Award for Southern history once, and has been twice nominated for the Pulitzer Prize.

For several years, he was the editor of the magazine Civil War Times Illustrated. He has also served as a consultant on the A&E television series Civil War Journal.

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Reviews

[Katherine Addison]

This calls itself a "photographic portrait" of the Civil War. Acres of photographs, arranged thematically, and terrible, terrible captions. The captions declare the Civil War to have been glorious, praise the heroes on both sides, wax sentimental about the soldier's life, and barely mention slavery at all. It's like the Civil War is a thing that doesn't need its origins talked about and that we can all celebrate unproblematically. (My feeling is that the Civil War is a monstrous thing, as all wars are monstrous, and we need to talk about its origins a lot.) The photographs, on the other hand, are stark rather than sentimental, and tell a rather different story than the captions.

Five stars for the photographs, two for the captions. Three and a half stars, round up to four.

[Grant]

An excellent collection of photographs, many not available elsewhere. While there are occasional romanticizations, the introductory essays and captions are informative.

[Karl H]

Ok, book.