As I near the completion of the Branch-Lane manuscript, I
think back about some of the secondary sources that have come out since I
finished my first foray into the world of the Army of Northern Virginia in
2005. There have been some fantastic books released in the past 11 years, books
that tremendously helped with the pursuit of writing a brigade history. Here
are a few of them, not in order of importance, but in the order that I used
them.
Probably the first outstanding book would be David S.
Hartwig's To Antietam Creek: The Maryland
Campaign of 1862 (2012). Hartwig's tome only covers the actions prior to the
battle of Sharpsburg, all in 808 pages of detail-rich prose. 
Tom Clemens has worked wonders on an old manuscript, The Maryland Campaign of September 1862
(2010-2016). There will be three volumes total. They were originally written by
Army veteran Ezra Carman. The level of detail is great! Carman corresponded
with both his fellow Union veterans, and Confederate veterans as well.
In the Gettysburg world, Kent Masterson Brown's Retreat from Gettysburg: Lee, Logistics, and
the Pennsylvania is an incredible read. Brown's tome provides us with the
most complete (to date) look into the way that Lee's army worked (or maybe at
times, did not work), as it traveled to Gettysburg, and then worked its way
back across the Potomac River.
Along those same lines, but with a different take, is Eric
Wittenberg, Michael Nugent, and J. D. Petruzzi's One Continuous Fight: The Retreat from Gettysburg and the Pursuit of
Lee's Army (2011). This book is detail rich, and combined with Brown's
books above, along with Coddington, and the works of Pfanz, really complete the
Gettysburg story.
The second and greatly expanded edition of Richard J.
Sommer's Richmond Redeemed: The Siege at
Petersburg, the Battles of Chaffin's Bluff and Poplar Springs, September
29-October 2, 1864 (2014) is fantastic. Almost 700 pages are devoted to
four days, a part of the Petersburg Campaign that often gets lost in Grant's
various attempts to take the Cockade City or capture Richmond.
Also a second edition is A. Wilson Greene's Breaking the Backbone of the Rebellion: The
Final Battles of the Petersburg Campaign (2008). The original edition was
really good. The level of detail added to the last two weeks or so of the
Petersburg campaign is fantastic.
Falling on the heels of the breakthrough on April 2, 1865,
was the battle of Battery Gregg. John Fox's Confederate
Alamo: the Bloodbath at Petersburg's Fort Gregg on April 2, 1865, (2010)
covers the afternoon of fighting on April 2. It is surprising that no one had
ever looked at this battle in detail.
There you have it - thousands of pages of some of the best
releases on campaigns in the eastern theater of the war, published since 2005.
