In April 2021, the library held a four-part virtual series featuring noted speaker Giacomo Calabria highlighting the military science of the American Civil War.
Calabria discussed the inner-workings of the Lincoln administration, Union and Confederate military strategies, Civil War era weapons and technologies, and some of the major battles and campaigns.
This series, which was part of the library’s Coffee and Conversation programming, was co-sponsored by Bethlehem Senior Projects, Inc. and grant-funded by Humanities New York.
Click on the links below to watch a recording of the discussion.
Part I: 1861: Fort Sumter, Bull Run, Strategies
Part II: 1862: Shiloh, Peninsula, Hampton Roads, Antietam, Fredericksburg
Part III: 1863: Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, Vicksburg, Chattanooga
Part IV: 1864/5: The Wilderness, Overland, Atlanta, Sherman’s March, War’s end
Recommended reading for supplemental research:
- “Grant” by Ron Chernow
- The Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant
- “An American Iliad: The Story of the Civil War” by Charles P. Roland
- “The Killer Angels” by Jeff Shaara
- Memoirs of General William T. Sherman
- The Civil War Diary of Gideon Welles, Lincoln’s Secretary of the Navy
- “The Bonfire: The Siege and Burning of Atlanta” by Marc Wortman