A Campaign of Giants: The Battle for Petersburg: Volume One, From the Crossing of the James to the Crater

The conclusion of the Centenary of World War I may be the appropriate moment to re-visit America’s forerunner to modern siege warfare, the ten-month Richmond-Petersburg campaign which all but concluded the agonizingly long struggle in the eastern theater. Just as the Western Front in France eventually cracked, opening the way to the Armistice, so too did Robert E. Lee’s determined stand for the Confederate capital, thus leading to the Appomattox solution. In a comprehensive, labor of love based on encyclopedic knowledge of men and events, long-time Petersburg authority A. Wilson Greene prepares a three-volume treatise, the first of which covers what essentially can be found in essays in Gary Gallagher and Caroline Janney, Cold Harbor to the Crater: The End of the Overland Campaign (2015) or Earl J. Hess, In the Trenches at Petersburg; Field Fortifications and Confederate Defeat (2011). For those readers wishing to explore twists and turns in detail or visit what is left of sites and terrain in this fast-urbanizing section of Tidewater Virginia, Greene’s efforts are most rewarding. He has written, lectured and roamed the written and physical landscape in great detail and authority