Valley Thunder: The Battle of New Market and the Opening of the Shenandoah Campaign, May 1864, Charles Knight, Savas Beatie Publications, 11 maps, photographs and illustrations, appendices, notes, bibliography, index, 360 pages, $29.95Civil War Books and Authors weblog on Thursday, May 13 gives Valley Thunder high marks:
Valley Thunder: The Battle of New Market and the Opening of the Shenandoah Valley Campaign, May 1864 by Charles R. Knight (Savas Beatie, 2010).
William C. Davis's The Battle of New Market (Doubleday, 1975) has always been my favorite of his many books, but in the 35 years since its publication enough new source material has emerged to justify a new book length account. Happily for students of the Civil War and the 1864 campaign in the Shenandoah, Charles R. Knight's Valley Thunder is a masterpiece of modern battle history, firmly establishing itself as the new standard work on the subject, a situation that Davis himself readily concedes in his gracious and incredibly effusive introduction to Knight's book. When Davis places Valley Thunder in the top dozen Civil War battle histories that have ever been published, it should raise eyebrows a bit, but, if he's overdone it, he's not off by much. The review continues at Civil War Books and Authors weblog.
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