Billy Yank: The Uniform of the Union Army, 1861-1865

Micheal J. McAfee, the first author, is a long time accquaintance. He has been a curator at the West Point Military Academy Museum for many years. He is a Fellow of the Company of Military Historians, has been at times a governor of the same, and is internationally known as an expert on the uniforms styled Zouaves, worn by U.S. forces in the Civil War, and based on those worn by French forces raised in North Africa, which in turn were influenced by the natives of the area and cut in the manner of their clothing. He is well qualified to cover this subject. The second author J. Phillip Langellier,The author has produced a slew of photo studies with incisive text on the life and times of the U.S. soldier, and his Spanish and Mexican californio predecessors also. His specialty is in gathering together contemporary source material for the illustrations. This method has the great virtue of showing what was what and when. But if no photos are available, then something may be omitted. All of these books are vertical studies covering a period of years. Though sometimes the illustrations serve to identify individual items of equipment, these works are not intended for that purpose. They are not catalogs intended for materiel collectors. They are of such a length and of such a level of detail that they will serve the purposes of the general reader with a curiousity about what grandaddy did in WW II or great great great grandaddy in the Civil War and what he looked like and how he lived. This is not to say that the specialist such as myself cannot find useful nuggets herein. I can. I use these books in this G.I. series for general surveys of periods I do not study in detail, such as the Civil War, and the War With Mexico, etc. I have yet to be disappointed with any of them.