"Stillness at Appomtatox." First great Civil War book I ever read. My parents must have bought it in the '50's and it was gathering dust on the book shelf, until the day, must have been 1965, I picked it up and started reading. (It was on a summer reading list.) Been an on-and-off Civil War reader ever since. Thanks, Bruce Catton.

Thank you, Catton is the best. I am so glad others feel that way. He was IT. Talk about all the others and they cannot touch him. I wrote a paper in graduate school about the surrender. Although I read several books for it, that was the one stayed in mind. Two very selective intelligent minds standing off what a great story!

I am a fan of Civil War fiction, and am always on the lookout for more. Reading is my passion, and to learn something at the same time is extremely satisfying.

A book that touched my heart was Andersonville (MacKinley Kantor)-- it's thick and satisfying and so very tragic.

March, by Geraldine Brooks.

The March, by E.L. Doctorow

John Jake's books (like candy)

Cold Mountain (I loved the you-are-there trivia about life in that era, from the back-breaking work to grow food to the loneliness of a farm.)

And ... of course, Gone with the Wind. I just got the authorized prequel, Rhett Butler's People, and will be reading it next.

The man I wrote the book about actually is based on some Cantor books. Have you ever read Bruce Catton? He is from the fifties and is long gone but you canfind him anywhere. The other book is quite bad about a sequence to Gone With the Wind so I have always backed away from them. But I hear that the Rhette book. Hvar ever read Eugenia Price? I suspect that you would enjoy her, and she is a bit old too. The Beloved Invader was her first. I actually cried when I finished her series on Savannah because I thought that I could never write like that.

last one. Margaret Mitchell never wanted this. She wrote that one book and that was supposed to be it. She had all of her papers burned at her death. If she had lived linger I suspect that would have changed.

I'm reading Jacob's Ladder at the moment (I'm up to May 10, 1863), will read the sequel, and then Rhett Butler's People. I'll post how it reads. Willing to give it a try, at least.

You are, of course, forgetting about possible the best Civil War novel -- THE KILLER ANGELS by Michael Shaara.