Today, A Civil War Trilogy.

First, Stephen Sears' Landscape Turned Red, a recap of the Battle of Antietam. (One of the things that I enjoy is that when I go to Amazon to link my recommendations, they always get high rankings: I obviously have very good taste. ) Single battle books became all the rage in civil war history a couple of decades ago...if they were so successful, then in part it was because Sears did such a spectacular job with this one, a description of the critical battle of Antietam, when McClellan had Lee caught to dead rights, and somehow Lee still managed to out-general him. Just a superb book.

Second, Michael Shaara's Pulitzer Prize-winning The Killer Angels. This is a book I came across probably about 10 years before everyone else, I was singing its praises long before it became Pulitzer material. Not too far to say it's on a par with Cranes' "Red Badge of Courage" in Civil War fiction. The story of Gettysburg told through the eyes of a few critical folks, often copied, never approached.

Finally, if you really want to get a sense of the civil war, probably James Longstreet's From Manassas to Appomattox would do just fine. Longstreet was commander of Lee's 1st Corps in the Army of Northern Virginia, the finest unit in that fine army, and Longstreet was Lee's best, steadiest, commander by far. From Manassas to Appomattox is his memoir of his career in the Civil War, seen from the perspective of a general. One thing that's really neat about this book is that he gives the Orders of Battle for each of the major battles, you get a real sense of the masses of men that go into to the making of an army.