Touched by Fire: A National Historical Society Photographic Portrait of the Civil War

by William C. Davis (Editor)

This two-volumes-in-one collection of 1,200 rare black-and-white photographs, gathered through the joint efforts of the National Historical Society and the Civil War Times, covers the leaders and the common soldiers, the compact of comradeship, the ideologies of the governments at war, the aspirations of the people who supported them and the devastation wreaked on the nation.

Genres: Civil War, History

648 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 · Rating 4 out of 5]

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 · Rating 5 out of 5]

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

[Karl · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ok, book.