JEWISH SOLDIERS IN THE CIVIL WAR: THE UNION ARMY

THE EXPERIENCES OF JEWISH SOLDIERS IN THE UNION ARMY COME INTO FOCUS IN THIS COMPREHENSIVE BOOK

Author: Adam D Mendelsohn Publisher: New York University Press Price: £30.96 (Hardback); £28.99 (Kindle)

Adam D Mendelsohn shouldered an immense task when he was enlisted by the Shapell Manuscript Foundation to illuminate the experience of the Jewish soldier in the Union Army during the American Civil War. Of course, there had been some research done in earlier decades, but nevertheless it had been incomplete, at times somewhat inaccurate, and certainly shaped by the lens of history.

Mendelsohn set to the research and writing of Jewish Soldiers in the Civil War: The Union Army, the first of two books on the topic of the Jewish experience in the war, with clarity and comprehension of his mission. While the second instalment, a treatment of the Jewish soldiers in the Confederate Army, is forthcoming, the first is an indication of the depth and breadth, energy and inquisitiveness, which the author applied to the project.