The Library of Congress Illustrated Timeline of the Civil War

November 15, 2011
Introducing the Civil War, this pictorial almanac expresses time in a line ruled horizontally through the center of its pages. Enumerating every date from February 1, 1861, to May 31, 1865, the time line's boldface dates pertain to a captioned image above the line or a paragraph of text below the line. This graphic design imposes an economy on factual content, but it compensates by expelling inevitability about the war's course and outcome from its audience's conception of the conflict. Writer Wagner, whose prior variation on chronology was The American Civil War: 365 Days (2006), induces an appreciation for contingency by selecting imagesphotographs, drawings, and postwar lithographskeyed to fluctuations of morale, whether it be the North or South, about the war's direction and duration, and by putting them under the rubrics of the Union's moves toward slavery's abolition, the Confederacy's food shortages, and, of course, battle. Here intervals of months on Wagner's time line, which battered armies needed to recover, visually reveal a major reason for the protraction of the war. Browsers and buffs should flock to this high-quality production.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)