TOCWOC - A Civil War Blog

I spent a couple of hours yesterday touring the new Gettysburg National Military Park Visitors Center, highlighted by the Gettysburg Museum of the American Civil War. Very impressive! For a half dozen photos and my commentary, please visit my Charge! blog entry.

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Those of us in the miniature wargaming hobby are very well aware of the British book publisher, Osprey. Based in Oxford, the company was originally created as a subsidiary of a tea company that had packaged trading cards of military aircraft with their tea products. The cards’ artist proposed a series of books on warplanes, [...]

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Roll Call to Destiny
The Soldier’s Eye View of Civil War Battles
Roll Call to Destiny puts readers on the front lines of the Civil War by providing the point of view of small bands of men who braved unique combat situations. Acclaimed military historian Brent Nosworthy answers such questions as what it was like for artillery [...]

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I am a political cartoon junkie! When I was a kid, I used to clip out the best cartoons from the local newspaper, the Zanesville (Ohio) Times Recorder. I grew up in the Vietnam War era –a time of long-haired sloppy-looking dropouts, fervent anti-war protestors, spaced out dopeheads, greedy TV preachers, frustrating Ohio sports teams, [...]

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I posted some comments regarding Veterans Day on one of my blogs today. I extend my personal thanks and my deepest gratitude to TOCWOC readers and contributors who have served in the armed forces. Thanks!

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Over the past few years, a few folks in my extended family have been researching the family’s history, which can be traced to the 17th century in Europe (England and Germany). Of interest to me was the number of Civil War ancestors. I knew that my great-great-grandfather, William Sisson, fought in the 60th Ohio at [...]

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There are more than 1,000 books that have been published over the past century and a half concerning the Battle of Gettysburg, and thousands of magazine and newspaper articles, as well as other written prose on the fighting. Only a handful focus on the retreat from Gettysburg (with Eric and J.D.’s new book in 2008 [...]

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I just love browsing through used book stores! In three decades of heavy business travel, I have made it a point over the years of finding stores that cater to my hobbies and interests - baseball card shops, miniature wargaming stores, and used bookshops. The latter is the most prevalent by far, and often the [...]

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Every day as I drive around south-central Pennsylvania and also during occasional trips into Maryland and Northern Virginia on business, I am reminded at how much of this area’s once beautiful pastoral countryside is being swallowed up by new housing developments. The area around York and Gettysburg just a decade ago still had some faint [...]

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I recently spent some time in Sharpsburg, Maryland, recently for parts of the 145th Anniversary commemoration of the Battle of Antietam, a special event since several of my family fought there.
The Antietam Visitors Center bookstore sells my Human Interest Stories from Antietam, and I signed several dozen copies for the store’s inventory. My son and I [...]

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