Additional Reading
All of the materials you need for the staff ride can be found on the Participant Itinerary & Roles page; in addition, Stephen Sears' book, Landscape Turned Red is easily the best single work on the Maryland campaign of 1862. But should you have an interest in further exploration of the battle and related subjects, here are some suggestions (titles link to Amazon.com):
Jay Luvaas and Harold W. Nelson, eds., The U.S. Army War College Guide to the Battle of Antietam: The Maryland Campaign of 1862 (Carlisle, PA: South Mountain Press, 1987).
A detailed guide to the battlefields, using excerpts from the Official Records (see below). Useful appendices on logistics, order of battle, and casualties.
Gary W. Gallagher, ed. Antietam: Essays on the 1862 Maryland Campaign. (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1989).
Only one hundred pages long, but punchy and up to date.
William A. Frassanito, Antietam: The Photographic Legacy of America's Bloodiest Day . (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1978).
The author, an intelligence analyst turned photographic historian, has assembled a meticulously prepared collection of then-and-now shots of the battlefield.
Stephen W. Sears, George B. McClellan: The Young Napoleon. (New York: Ticknor & Fields, 1988).
Alan T. Nolan, Lee Considered: General Robert E. Lee & Civil War History. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991).
The best biography of McClellan, and a recent short, critical look at Lee, to be contrasted with the usual admiring accounts.
James M. McPherson, For Cause & Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997).
Gerald F. Linderman, Embattled Courage: The Experience of Combat in the American Civil War. (New York: Free Press, 1987).
McPherson disagrees with Linderman, but both of considerable interest.
James M. McPherson and William J. Cooper, eds., Writing the Civil War: The Quest to Understand (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1998).
A fine collection of essays by top scholars on central issues of dispute in the history of the Civil War.
Tony Horwitz, Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War (New York: Vintage, 1999).
A wonderful book by a Pulitzer prize winner about how the memory of the Civil War lingers, in hilarious and deeply disturbing ways.
War of the Rebellion: Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Series I, Vol. 19, Parts I-II (Washington: Government Printing Office 1889).
The Official Records (or OR, as they are usually called) have recently been reprinted. An hour or two spent scanning the reports and correspondence of the main participants gives one a feel for them and the battle that a secondary source, no matter how good, cannot match. The OR are also available on compact disk.
Finally, if you are interested in a general
study of high command in war, including a chapter on Abraham Lincoln, see
Eliot A. Cohen,
Supreme Command: Soldiers, Statesmen, and Leadership in Wartime
(New York: Free Press, 2002).