I just received news that The Petersburg Campaign Volume 2: The Western Front Battles September 1864-April 1865 by Ed Bearss, and edited by Bryce Suderow, has won the Douglas Southall Freeman award. More to come as more information is available, and buy the book.
Editor Bryce Suderow had the following to say about winning the award:
I feel extraordinary awe when I look at the list of historians who have received the Douglas Southall Freeman award during the past thirty years. I feel humbled, and to be included among them is an unexpected and signal honor.
I believe, with all due modesty, that The Petersburg Campaign will earn a place among the significant books on the Civil War. It is an intricately detailed study that at last brings clarity to this prolonged, dogged, often misunderstood nine-month series of operations against a city that was vital to the survival of the Confederacy.
Edwin Bearss wrote this amazing study in the 1960s. Truly he was years ahead of his time. If anyone deserves the Douglas Southall Freeman award, Ed is the one. At last he receives a fitting award for this fine book, forty years later.
Obviously a work such as this is not done in a vacuum. Lamar Williams’s untiring efforts to ensure that the manuscript adhered to the requirements of Savas Beatie deserve recognition. Michael McCarthy is a brilliant historian and a gifted writer who was instrumental in updating Edwin C. Bearss’s version of the Five Forks chapter. George Skoch is the most gifted battlefield cartographer I know; his work immensely improved this book. I am indebted to Lamar, Mike, and George for their invaluable contributions, and I am proud to call them friends.
Finally, but by no means last, I thank Ted Savas for having faith in The Petersburg Campaign.
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