The Civil War (book series)

The Civil War book series (OCLC 20080930) chronicles in great detail the American Civil War. Published by Time Life Books, the series was simultaneously released in the US and Canada between 1983 and 1987, with subsequent identical reprints in the late 1980s - early 1990s following suit for foreign, though untranslated, dissemination as well. 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.

Overview

Each volume in the series 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.

There are 28 volumes in the series:

Title	Consultants/Authors	Volume	Year published	ISBN
Brother Against Brother - The War Begins	William C. Davis	01	1983	ISBN 0-8094-4700-2
First Blood - Fort Sumter to Bull Run	William C. Davis	02	1983	ISBN 0-8094-4704-5
The Blockade - Runners and Raiders	John R. Elting, James J. Robertson, William A. Frassatino, Les Jenson, Michael McAffee, Clark G. Reynolds, James P. Shenton	03	1983	ISBN 0-8094-4708-8
The Road to Shiloh - Early Battles in the West	David Nevin	04	1983	ISBN 0-8094-4712-6
Forward to Richmond - McClellan's Peninsular Campaign	Ronald H. Bailey	05	1983	ISBN 0-8094-4720-7
Decoying the Yanks - Jackson's Valley Campaign	Champ Clark	06	1984	ISBN 0-8094-4724-X
Confederate Ordeal - The Southern Home Front	Steve A. Channing	07	1984	ISBN 0-8094-4728-2
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	ISBN 0-8094-4804-1
The Coastal War - Chesapeake Bay to Rio Grande	Peter M. Chaitin	09	1984	ISBN 08094-4732-0
Tenting Tonight - The Soldier's Life	James I. Robertson, Jr.	10	1984	ISBN 0-8094-4736-3
The Bloodiest Day - The Battle of Antietam	Ronald H. Bailey	11	1984	ISBN 0-8094-4740-1
War on the Mississippi - Grant's Vicksburg Campaign	Jerry Korn	12	1985	ISBN 0-8094-4744-4
Rebels Resurgent - Fredericksburg to Chancellorsville	William K. Goolrick	13	1985	ISBN 0-8094-4748-7
Twenty Million Yankees - The Northern Home Front	Donald Dale Jackson	14	1985	ISBN 0-8094-4752-5
Gettysburg - The Confederate High Tide	Champ Clark	15	1985	ISBN 0-8094-4756-8
The Struggle for Tennessee - Tupelo to Stones River	James Street, Jr.	16	1985	ISBN 0-8094-4760-6
The Fight For Chattanooga - Chickamauga to Missionary Ridge	Jerry Korn	17	1985	ISBN 0-8094-4816-5
Spies, Scouts and Raiders - Irregular Operations	John R. Elting, William A. Frassatino, Les Jenson, Michael McAffee	18	1985	ISBN 0-8094-4716-9
Battles For Atlanta - Sherman Moves East	Ronald H. Bailey	19	1985	ISBN 0-8094-4773-8
The Killing Ground - Wilderness to Cold Harbor	Gregory Jaynes	20	1986	ISBN 0-8094-4768-1
Sherman's March - Atlanta to the Sea	David Nevin	21	1986	ISBN 0-8094-4812-2
Death in the Trenches - Grant at Petersburg	William C. Davis	22	1986	ISBN 0-8094-4776-2
War on the Frontier - The Trans-Mississippi West	Alvin M. Josephy, Jr.	23	1986	ISBN 0-8094-4780-0
The Shenandoah in Flames - The Valley Campaign of 1864	Thomas A. Lewis	24	1987	ISBN 0-8094-4784-3
Pursuit to Appomattox - The Last Battles	Jerry Korn	25	1987	ISBN 0-8094-4788-6
The Assassination - Death of the President	Champ Clark	26	1987	ISBN 0-8094-4820-3
The Nation Reunited - War's Aftermath	Richard W. Murphy	27	1987	ISBN 0-8094-4792-4
Master Index - An Illustrated Guide	Editors of Time Life Books	28	1987	ISBN 0-8094-4796-7

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.

Slipcases

• While the series was being released for the first time, the publisher had enabled its subscribers to separately order in gold imprinted hardboard slipcases, executed in blue and able to hold three volumes.
• The publisher repeated this for its 1999 reprint run, but this time as gray, embossed hardcover slipcases, able to hold two volumes.

These slipcases are relatively rare.

Excerpt

A 432-page excerpt hardcover variant edition, its chapter organization roughly following the series title order as released, was concurrently published in 1990 by educational publisher Prentice Hall as "Brother against brother, Time-Life Books History of the Civil War" (ISBN 0139218181), as well as by Time-Life itself in a dust jacket for the general populace under the same title (ISBN 0809478471), which was subsequently reprinted as "The Time-Life History of the Civil War" by Barnes & Noble Books in 1995 (ISBN 1566199026), 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.

Spin-offs

A well-received series at the time, it has enticed Time-Life to delve much deeper into the subject of the American Civil War with follow-up releases as companion series, becoming arguably Time-Life's most revisited topic in the process. These included, Collector's Library of the Civil War (1981-1985, 28 volumes – reprinted by Easton Press in 1998 with two additional titles – deluxe reproductions of memoirs written by Civil War participants, OCLC 41657774, actually already started before the main series and therefore conceivably the de facto source publication), Echoes of Glory (1991, 3 volume box set, two volumes detailing the arms and equipment of both respective armies, the third one being an historical atlas of the war, re-using the maps the publisher had originally commissioned for the main series, OCLC 40341912 – reprinted several times in the 1990s in varying executions, including a 1999 boxed softcover edition, ISBN 0737031573), and Voices of the Civil War (1996-1998, 18 illustrated volumes, reproductions of letters from Civil War participants, written at the time of the key battles around which the series was organized). Aside from these, Time-Life (re)issued The Civil War: A Narrative – 40th Anniversary Edition in 1999-2000, an illustrated commemorative version of Shelby Foote's magus opus (14 volumes – the original three-volume work was, save for a few maps, not illustrated). Additionally, two stand-alone titles were released as a, summarizing, general history of the war, and, like Voices and A Narrative, again making use of the considerable pictorial archive the publisher had accumulated for the main series, including their own commissioned maps. The first one concerned "War between Brothers" (ISBN 0783562519), released in 1996 as part of the 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" (ISBN 073703162X), a truly stand-alone title as that title was not a part of a series.

Nor have the "War between Brothers" and "Illustrated History" remained the only stand-alone Civil War titles by Time-Life; despite the fact that the publisher had largely withdrawn from book publication in 2003, subsequent iterations of the company did release additional Civil War book titles – aside from re-issuing the Illustrated History title in 2011 (ISBN 9781603201711) – mostly on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the war, being in essence largely rehashings of the considerable editorial effort they had undertaken for the main series thirty years earlier. Titles thus released included,

• "1863, Turning Point of the Civil War: Chancellorsville/Gettysburg/Vicksburg/Chickamauga/Chattanooga" (1998, ISBN 0737000287 and reproducing McPherson's aforementioned foreword)
• "Gettysburg" (2013, ISBN 9781618930538)
• "The Civil War in 500 Photographs" (2015, ISBN 9781618931481)
• "The Civil War; Generals in the Field" (2015, ISBN 9781547850730, 96-page single magazine theme issue)
• "On the Front Lines: From Fort Sumter to Appomattox" (2016, ISBN 9781683304173, 96-page single magazine theme issue)

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 for their American History Archives deluxe book series collection (which dealt with the overall history of the USA) and concerned "A Nation Divided: The Civil War Begins" (2003, ISBN 1581592019, = volume 01), "Gettysburg: The Tide of War Turns" (2003, ISBN 1581592167, = volume 15), and "Antietam, The Bloodiest Day" (2004, ISBN 1581592213, = 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.

Apart from the book titles, Time-Life has, as the first to do so with many others to follow, released the PBS multi-award-winning 1989-1990 documentary series The Civil War by documentary maker Ken Burns (who in turn was inspired by Shelby Foote's work) in 1990 as a 9-tape VHS box set under its own "Time Life Video" imprint. Voices of the Civil War was also released as a taped audio book series by Time-Life (for which the publisher had commissioned Hachette Audio), shortly after the release of the book versions. In 1991 the company also released "The Civil War Music: Collector's Edition" three-piece box set, a rendition of contemporary tunes played at the times, in both music cassette and CD formats (OCLC 42573680, 28509867). The accompanying 24-page booklet featured information lifted from the main series, predominantly from the volume Tenting Tonight.

An ancient, precursory publication on the topic had been the centennial 1961 six-part The Civil War article series for Life Magazine, commemorating the centennial anniversary, from which the book "Great Battles of the Civil War" (OCLC 1044896) was derived in the same year. This ancient release was in 1963 followed by two equally ancient plain hardcover volumes from the early The LIFE History of the United States series, volumes 5 ("The Union Sundered, 1849-1865", OCLC 228435529) and 6 ("The Union Restored, 1861-1876", OCLC 1407715615), in both cases endowed with a revised 1974 deluxe faux burgundy red leatherette in dust jacket reprint edition (OCLC 1417554798, 1417573572 respectively) and authored by American historian T. Harry Williams.

Promotion

As had become standard practice for Time Life Books by the late 1970s and 1980s, the series was vigorously supported by a television ad campaign in the form of a series of commercials transmitted either in first-run syndication or during late-night television programming. The Civil War book series commercials were broadcast on television in the latter half of the 1980s.

The television ad campaigns were complementary to Time Life's standard operating procedure of sending out elaborate multi-sheet mailings to their already existing customer base, in which a series was introduced in detail to a potential subscriber; having taken out a subscription once, a customer was then registered in Time Life Books' customer database, at the time a crucial business model marketing tool for the company, making that customer eligible for receiving the company's mailings henceforth.

As was customary for Time Life Books at the time, the first book ordered (typically volume 1 at first, but volumes 8, 15 and 20 were later offered as starting volumes as well) was sent on a ten-day trial basis at a reduced price, after which each bi-monthly next installment could be assessed by customers on the same basis. In addition, US customers who responded to the television ads were rewarded with a free gift which was a portable radio at first and after it was released in 1982, a 400-page copy of "The Civil War Almanac" (ISBN 0871966409, featuring a foreword by renowned American historian Henry Steele Commager). Additionally, all subscribers received a double-printed Civil War poster as a bonus gift with their first book which showed 1880s print reproductions of the uniforms from both armies on one side, and the used weaponry on the other, which customers were allowed to keep even if they decided to return the volume it came with.