TOCWOC – A Civil War Blog

Category: Television

  • Leadership Lessons from the Siege of Petersburg: Richard J. Sommers

    Dr. Richard J. Sommers, author of Richmond Redeemed, recently reprinted in a Second Edition by Savas Beatie, recently gave a talk about leadership at the Siege of Petersburg which aired on CSPAN.  Luckily for us, as Dr. Sommers writes in an email, it’s now available online: C-SPAN filmed a presentation on “Richmond Redeemed: Enduring Lessons […]

  • The Abolitionists: PBS American Experience

    I just wanted to alert TOCWOC readers quickly of the next American Experience episode (or in this case three episodes), The Abolitionists.  The first part debuts on Tuesday, January 8, 2013 in most markets, to be followed by parts 2 and 3 in succeeding weeks.  I hope to have a short review up on the  […]

  • Review: Death and the Civil War (PBS American Experience)

    I’ve been a fan of the American Experience series for quite some time now.  I love the way PBS takes significant events in American History and covers them in surprising detail for a television show.  Experts, typically those who have written books on a subject or have spent considerable portions of their lives studying the […]

  • Short Takes

    The remnants of a blockade runner have come to light in Tampa, Florida. Chief researcher John William Morris said the dimensions of the wreck are within inches of that of the Scottish Chief, and it’s in a spot where the vessel was believed abandoned by Confederate troops after Tampa’s one and only Civil War skirmish. […]

  • Unsolved History: Pickett’s Charge

    Watched an episode of Unsolved History the other night on Pickett’s Charge and it was actually pretty good. For those unfamiliar with the series, it takes a historical event with ambiguous circumstances and tries, using scientific techniques, to clarify them. In this case it was the reasons for the failure of the climactic Confederate attack […]

  • Digging Up The Crater

    I’ve been watching parts of “Digging Up The Trenches” on the Military Channel tonight. One segment deals with the Battle of Messines (7 June, 1917) in Flanders which has some very obvious parallels to the Battle of the Crater fought near Petersburg almost exactly 53 years before. The objective in the Flanders battle was Messines […]