Guide to the Atlanta Campaign:
Rocky Face Ridge to Kennesaw Mountain
Edited by Jay Luvaas and Harold W. Nelson
(February/March 2009 Civil War News)

Illustrated, index, softcover, 383 pp., 2008. University Press of Kansas, 2502 Westbrooke Circle, Lawrence, KS 66045-4444, $17.95 plus shipping.

Reviewer: Nicholas Kurtz
Nicholas Kurtz graduated from the University of Colorado-Denver in 2001 with a BA in History. He loves wandering battlefields and is an aspiring author. Although he finds all aspects of the war interesting his primary interest is the Western Theater. 

Review:
If you are familiar with the War College Guides, then you already know that this is a book you need to own. If you are new to the series, here is a brief overview.

Each guide, this is the seventh, traces the actions of a battle or campaign with the Official Records as your guide. The editors put you in the place where the action occurred and then let the commanding officers’ reports explain the fight to you.

When the Official Records are skimpy the editors also rely on excerpts from the Battles and Leaders series as well as some memoirs, but most stops of the tour are explained with the ORs.

The volume has a few slight problems that detract from its overall value. At the stop for some artillery positions on Rocky Face Ridge the directions tell you to walk along a concrete path marked “Personnel Only” near the George State Patrol office.

It does not then explicitly say that following this path is fine, so one is left to assume that it is OK to disregard the sign since the guide says to. Personally I would have liked a little more clarification that it is OK to walk the path.

I did not like the maps as they have too much variation. Some use shading to denote elevation while some use topographic lines. None of these lines are marked so while I can figure out relative elevations, it would have been easier if a few topo lines had been marked with elevations.

Other maps do not use shading or line to denote elevation, they simply show streams and roads. I am not a big fan of using gray maps. Such a map seems more cluttered than a white one with the same information on it.

One final map complaint is for the Pickett’s Mill section. The overview map shows the park’s trail system, but the detail map that shows the troop movements lacks the trail information. While showing the trails might have made this a very cluttered map, it would have definitely enhanced the tour experience.

I cannot remember from the last time I was at Pickett’s Mill if the park trail map showed troops’ movements, but even if it did it would make more sense to have all the information on one map so that one did not have to worry about orientation and scale differences between the two maps.

I was surprised that the editors did not include any of the battles of Atlanta in the book. These battles were not even treated as a side trip. The tour ends with the fighting at Kolb’s Farm at Kennesaw Mountain. The editors say this battle set “the stage for the next phase of the campaign for Atlanta, which is best studied in textbooks rather than on sites covered with modern development.”

I can see their point, but on the other hand there are still things to see in Atlanta. Even if they do not offer great views, these sites can still give some appreciation for the amount of ground covered and how Hood dealt with the encircling Union army. The editors brought you this far, so to suddenly stop the tour seems a bit odd.

Of the seven books in the series, Luvaas and Nelson were part of six. The other one was done by Matt Spruill on Chickamauga. Since then Spruill had written other guidebooks along the same lines as the War College books. He has done some on those sites that apparently Luvaas and Nelson thought were too overdeveloped for worthwhile touring, namely Stones River and Chattanooga.

Despite my complaints about the maps and the lack of anything on Atlanta, I do think this is a worthwhile addition to the traveler’s library. No other guidebook will provide you with this sort of detail in touring the sites from Rocky Face Ridge to Kennesaw Mountain. I’m sure the next time I’m in northern Georgia I will get good use out of this book.