James Bond Book Sells for $21,000

Off topic, but nevertheless, WOW! Check it out here.

What Are the All-Time Best Selling Civil War Books?

I was wondering about the answer to this question and came across the following bit of info at eHow:

Fiction

• No Civil War book has sold more copies than Margaret Mitchell's 1935 romance Gone With the Wind. A stunning success by the time the movie was released in 1939, it has sold more than 30 million copies. Though fiction, it draws heavily from the life of Mary Chestnut, whose published diary revealed life among the Confederate aristocracy. Other leading novels include 1997's Cold Mountain by Charles Frazer, which has sold more than four million copies, and Gods and Generals by Jeff Shaara, which has passed the two million mark since 1996. Also among bestsellers is Stephen Crane's classic The Red Badge of Courage, which earned him instant fame in 1895.

Nonfiction

• Nonfiction Civil War books frequently focus on specific topics or battles, but among those covering the entire war, 1960's The American Heritage New History of the Civil War, written by Bruce Catton and edited by James McPherson, has been a perennial bestseller. Last updated in 2001, it remains extremely accessible to both young and adult readers. Catton's 1953 work A Stillness at Appomattox, his first successful book and the last of his trilogy concerning the Army of the Potomac, remains in wide circulation, as does McPherson's 1988 Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era. Ken Burns's 1990  The Civil War documentary popularized this book as source material, pushing sales past 600,000. The landmark film did the same for Shelby Foote's 1958 The Civil War: A Narrative. Between September 1990 and mid-1991, the book sold 400,000 copies and is now well past the half-million mark.
  Ordeal by Fire, written by Fletcher Pratt, sold poorly when released in 1935, but as the retitled A Short History of the Civil War in paperback, it became an immediate bestseller. Updated versions provide a brief but popular overview of the war.

Biographies

• Doris Kearn Goodwin's Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln was a "New York Times" and "Publishers Weekly" bestseller in 2005 and remains among Amazon's top-selling Civil War books in 2009. Other biographies of note include the Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant. Publisher Mark Twain hoped to sell 25,000 copies; he sold 350,000. The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, originally titled  Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave sold 30,000 copies between 1845 and 1850 and has become a classic work of American literature. Both books made Amazon's list of Civil War bestsellers in 2009, even though Douglass's account of life as a slave predates the war itself by two decades.

Of Note

• Though not strictly about the Civil War, Uncle Tom's Cabin, or, Life Among the Lowly, was a precursor of it. President Lincoln called author Harriet Beecher Stowe "the little lady who started the big war." Published in 1852, the antislavery novel was the second bestselling book of the 19th century and sold more than 500,000 copies in its first year. Not widely regarded as good literature, it nonetheless should be read by any serious student of the Civil War.

Other than perhaps Gods and Generals, all or at least most of these titles are highly collectible in the first edition. In the case of Team of Rivals, the Easton Press signed, leatherbound edition is pricey and desirable however the trade edition is quite common,

Tupelo

In the current issue of Civil War News, I noticed an ad for a deluxe reissue of Tupelo by the Rev. John H. Aughey (1828-1911), a Presbyterian minister living in Mississippi when the war started. Originally published in 1888 by the State Journal Company of Lincoln, Nebraska, Aughey's post-war reminiscence tells his tale of being imprisoned by Confederate authorities and twice condemned to execution for his outspoken anti-secession and pro-Union beliefs. Aughey makes good his escape and lives to tell the details of his ordeal in this autobiography. Though the author displays understandable disdain and harshness toward his captors, he nevertheless shows significant sympathy to most Southerners, especially fellow ministers.

Apparently Aughey wrote an earlier volume which was published in 1863 titled The Iron Furnace: or, Slavery and Secession which, according to scholar Allan Nevins was "a somewhat restrained attack on Southern institutions in general and slavery in particular." Nevins had little good to say about Tupelo, describing it as Aughey's "enlarged, greatly embellished sequel" to The Iron Furnace, and "far less trustworthy."

First editions are not plentiful, yet as seen here, do not seem to command unusually high prices.

This new edition, which sells for $49.95, is given the deluxe treatment by Burnished Bronze Press of Dallas, Texas. According to the publisher, and as you can see by the image, this new edition measures 6 x 9.25 inches, runs 624 pages, and features a burgundy leather binding over cream linen bookbinding cloth for the front and back panels. Additional production values include gold-tooled leather spine and gilt edged pages. I sent an email to the press seeking to learn how many copies were printed but have not heard back from them.

I also discovered this YouTube video to promote the book.

What a Boy Saw in the Army

Jesse Bowman Young (1844-1914) was just seventeen when he enlisted in the 4th Illinois Cavalry in August 1861. Along with his uncle, Major Samuel Millard Bowman, Young saw action in the west under General U.S. Grant. Young then transferred in 1862 to the 84th Pennsylvania Volunteers; a regiment that fought with distinction at Fredericksburg and at Chancellorsville. When his uncle assumed command of the 84th’s brigade, Young served as his aide and then became a divisional staff officer, serving in that capacity with General Sickles at Gettysburg in the Peach Orchard. Young had obtained a captain’s rank when he left the army in 1864 but was enticed to return with the offer of a colonelcy in what were then called “colored” regiments. The war ended while Young was awaiting his assignment.

Young enrolled at Dickinson College following the war and graduated in 1868. Upon graduation, Young entered the ministry and served that calling for the remainder of his life, first in Pennsylvania but then mostly in the Midwest. During these years, Young became a keen author and lecturer on both religious and military subjects.

In 1894, at the age of fifty, Young published his wartime memoirs in a thinly disguised, third-person story he titled What a Boy Saw in the Army. The book was published by Hunt & Eaton Publishers and was bound in blue cloth with gold gilt trimming. A deluxe, leather bound edition was also released.

According to a biography of Young by John Osborne, “Young appears throughout the book as "the boy," and his companions in arms and the posts in which he served, as well as the field officers he served under, mirror exactly the teenaged Young's experiences. Young's approach in this book is light and personal. His touch is often engaging, as when he describes the retreat at Shiloh in a chapter called "The Boy Learns What His Feet Were Made For." He does not, though, restrain himself from vivid and bloody descriptions of the folly, cowardice, and confusion that accompany courage and sacrifice in battle. His method enables him to see and relate all these events through the eyes of a naïve and not particularly robust young man, prone to his own weakness and error. What the boy does not himself see, he "hears" from his friends on other parts of the battlefield and so provides an interesting view of the war's progress. He is particularly effective in conveying the boredom, the drudgery, and the hardships of the life of the Civil War soldier. From the cold and tedium of winter camp at Stoneman's Switch, Virginia, to the futility of Burnside's "Mud March," and then the hard slog of the forced marches to counter Lee's invasion of Pennsylvania, the lot of the common soldier is shown in detail. Young is also able to weave in the popular feeling among the men concerning their leaders, their "immunity" to the preachers passing through their bivouacs, the courage of the Christian Commission's service among the wounded, and the dismay across his regiment when the Emancipation Proclamation made their fight an explicit conflict against slavery.” As an added bonus, the book is laden with 100 illustrations, many of them commissioned especially for this book. The artist was Frank Beard, the widely known illustrator for religious and social causes who for years was the principal cartoonist for the Ram's Horn, a famous Chicago social gospel magazine.

Young's memoirs here, taken together with his comprehensive treatment of the Battle of Gettysburg in another volume, provide a useful set of perspectives on the Civil War at a time when many of its younger veterans, now in middle age, were beginning to publish their experiences.

First editions of What a Boy Saw in the Army are not uncommon though with any book of this age, condition can be problematic. As shown here, there can be a wide range of pricing based on condition.

NPS Civil War Publications

There is an excellent article by Charles Michaud in the April 2012 issue of Firsts: The Book Collector's Magazine titled "Collecting National Park Service Civil War Publications." This essay discusses collecting a type of Civil War item that I had never even thought of, though that may now change. ;-)The piece also notes that "extensive checklists for this article will appear in next month's issue."

Individual articles are not available online though the magazine does sell individual issues.

"Civil War books combine history with collecting"

Here's a nice article on collecting Civil War books by Ken Gloss, owner of the Brattle Book Shop in downtown Boston – America’s oldest and one of its largest antiquarian bookstores. The story was originally published here on Nov. 6, 2011.

It’s now 150 years since the start of the American Civil War, which ran from 1861 to 1865 and was one of the most interesting and tragic chapters in the history of our country. It has spawned thousands of different books, both in non-fiction and fiction. Collectors interested in Civil War books can find everything from histories of individual regiments to extensive historical accounts of all four years of the war. In Massachusetts, The Historical Sketch of the 6th Massachusetts Regiment, written by John W. Hansen in 1866, is an accurate and interesting depiction of soldiers from this area. Another popular edition is The History of the 54th Massachusetts Regiment, the first African-American regiment.

These types of books are highly collectible because they contain encapsulated histories of the war and present a more personal picture of what happened to our ancestors. When these regimental histories were first released, they had limited distribution and print runs because the only people interested in local history were, of course, the local residents.

What makes these books, which can sell for a few hundred dollars, so intriguing are the details. They list every member of the regiment, allowing people to trace the lives of their great-great-grandparents. They also contain complete battle specifics, right down to the movements of all the soldiers. For history buffs and Civil War re-enactors, this kind of detail provides an accurate picture of what happened during the battles.

For a more general book on the Civil War, Kirkland’s 1866 edition of The Book of Anecdotes and Incidents of the Rebellion is a good choice. Written right after the end of the war, it has a fresher perspective than books written 30 or 40 years later. This book sells in the $35 to $100 range – a lesser price than the regiment histories because there were more Kirklands published.

The most requested Civil War book I see is The Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant, written in 1886. There is a whole series of biographies and autobiographies written about Civil War generals, but the most famous one is Grant’s. This book is probably also the best written of all of the books about Grant.

He was a great writer with a great editor: Mark Twain. This book, available in a two-volume set, was reprinted several times and sells for about $250 for a good copy, more for a deluxe leather-bound edition. However, prices are moderating as those searching for info now go to the Internet which decreases the demand though new and serious collectors keep collecting.

A number of people who pick up this book see Grant’s signature on the inside flap and think they have a valuable find. What they don’t realize is that Grant’s signature was printed in every copy of the book. It would be really amazing, a miracle in fact, if someone did have a copy with Grant’s actual handwriting inside – he died a month before the book was released.

The presidents who followed Grant have that book to thank for their pension program. Grant was essentially impoverished by the time he was an old man and wrote the memoirs to provide income for his retirement. When people realized a former president had been reduced to selling his life story for income, a push was made to implement the presidential pension plan that exists today.

There are stories behind so many of the books of the Civil War. It is one of the most highly collected events in world history because it is one of the few wars that transpired right on American soil. The impact of brother fighting brother also made the stories of the war dramatic and emotional, resulting in good reading as well as collecting. Although interest in that period has always been strong, the release of Ken Burns’ Civil War sparked a renewal of attention for the war.

Books written about events in the North are much easier to find than books printed in the South. Simply, the North had more money and supplies than the South, which even ran out of paper at one point during the war. By 1865, newspapers in the South were being printed on old sheets of wallpaper, something that makes them very collectible today.

The newspaper accounts of the war, particularly those written by writers in the regions where the battles were happening, often contain the most accurate information. They allow the reader to see the history as it unfolded, with day-by-day accounts of the fighting. The Southern papers tended to be more impassioned and thus are more valuable, than the ones from Northern publishers.

There are as many different aspects of the war upon which to concentrate a collection, as there are books. Everything from the naval history to the social events has been written about and chronicled in numerous books. Just collecting the photographs of the war, which depicted the battles in detail and showed soldiers proudly wearing their uniforms, can provide an amazing amount of information about the war. No matter which area of the war a collector decides to concentrate on, there are sure to be hundreds of books, in a wide variety of price ranges, available. The craze for Civil War memorabilia is still strong and shows no signs of slowing any time soon.

Hood's Tennessee Campaign

Though now close to eighty-five years old, this work still retains its status as an early and still important work on Confederate general John Bell Hood's ill-fated September - December 1864 campaign into Tennessee. In addition to four maps, the book features seventy pages of notes. An earlier incarnation of the work was awarded the 1920 Robert M. Johnston Military History Prize by the American Historical Association. Coupled with the fact that this book-length version was published late in the career of Neale Publishers and you have the makings of a very collectible book today.

Written by author Thomas R. Hay (1888-1974) from primarily a Confederate perspective (which was the case for most Neale books), the work begins with the opening of the campaign and proceeds toward the battles of Spring Hill, Franklin, and finally, the near-annihilation of Hood's command at Nashville. Hay then concludes his book with a discussion of Hood's retreat from Tennessee and how such losses spelled the end of the "lost cause."

First editions were published in 1929 by Walter Neale and Co., bound in blue cloth with black lettering on the front and spine. As you can see by the pictured copy (for sale here), the book was also originally issued with a dust jacket, which if intact will add geometric value to any copy in solid condition. The work was also reprinted by Morningside in 1976 and can be acquired from Gate House Press today.