With the assistance of several         scholars, including James M. McPherson and Gary Gallagher, and a long-time         specialist in Civil War books, Ralph Newman, David Eicher has selected         for inclusion in The Civil War in Books the 1,100 most important         books on the war. These are organized into categories as wide-ranging         as "Battles and Campaigns," "Biographies, Memoirs, and         Letters," "Unit Histories," and "General Works."         The last of these includes volumes on black Americans and the war, battlefields,         fiction, pictorial works, politics, prisons, railroads, and a host of         other topics.       Annotations are included for         all entries in the work, which is presented in an oversized 8 1/2 x 11         inch volume in two-column format. Appendixes list "prolific"         Civil War publishers and other Civil War bibliographies, and the works         included in Eicher's mammoth undertaking are indexed by author or editor         and by title.       Gary Gallagher's foreword         traces the development of Civil War bibliographies and declares that Eicher's         annotation exceeds that of any previous comprehensive volume. The Civil         War in Books, Gallagher believes, is "precisely the type of guide"         that has been needed.       The first full-scale, fully-annotated         bibliography on the Civil War to appear in more than thirty years, Eicher's         The Civil War in Books is a remarkable compendium of the best reading         available about the worst conflict ever to strike the United States.       The bibliography, the most         valuable reference book on the subject since The Civil War Day by Day,         will be essential for college and university libraries, dealers in rare         and secondhand books, and Civil War buffs.