I've written five books on the American Civil War, four of them have been published and I expect the fifth will be published as well. Over the years I've considered the titles employed with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight.
The first book I wrote was entitled The Petersburg Campaign, The Destruction of the Weldon Railroad: The Battles of Deep Bottom, Globe Tavern, and Reams Station, August 14-25, 1864. It was first published in 1991.
The title makes me laugh now. "Petersburg" is the kiss of death for a civil war book. Somehow it summons up the idea of trench warfare to readers though in fact much, maybe most, of the fighting occurred in the open around the flanks of the armies. Nonetheless, the false impression prevails.
Yet "Petersburg" can't be omitted from accounts of the great siege. That would be deceptive.
As for "the Weldon Railroad," those words don't even register in the minds of Civil War readers, much less summon up the more than 20,000 casualties of the battles around its rails from late June through August 1864. Deep Bottom, Globe Tavern, and Reams Station were as desperate and heroic as any other Civil War battles, but their names register with few readers.
I had another chance to name the book more resonantly with readers when it was republished in 2015 as a Sesquicentennial Edition with the late Dick Sommers's Richmond Redeemed and Andy Trudeau's The Last Citadel (pretty good company for any book on the Civil War).
I muffed the chance. The book was renamed The Siege of Petersburg: The Battles for the Weldon Railroad, August 1864. This title just repeated the dreaded word "Petersburg" and the minimally evocative words "Weldon Railroad."
If I had it to do over again, which I won't, I'd name the book in line with what I later learned from studying Gordon Rhea's titles. In his books on the Overland Campaign, he (very legitimately) worked "Grant and Lee" into the titles of his books about the lesser known of the battles, North Anna River and Cold Harbor. Almost any reader recognizes "Grant" and "Lee," who were opposed in those battles.
My name for the book would be Grant and Lee at the War's Crisis: The Fourth Offensive at Petersburg, August 1864. This title gets in "Grant" and "Lee," and "the War's Crisis" conveys the desperation involved more than the names of the scarcely recognized battles. "Petersburg" can't be avoided, but it doesn't need to be put up front. (The full title of Dick's book is Richmond Redeemed: The Siege at Petersburg, the Battles of Chaffin's Bluff and Poplar Spring Church, September 29-October 2, 1864, and the full title of Andy's book is The Last Citadel: Petersburg Virginia, June 1864-April 1865.
My second book, published in 1993) was named The Petersburg Campaign: June 1864-April 1865. In retrospect, and for the same reasons I think I could have done better with the name for my first book, my name for my second book would be Grant Versus Lee: The Siege of Petersburg, June 1864-April 1865. It puts Grant and Lee up front though it cannot avoid Petersburg.
I had not yet arrived at the conclusions set forth above when I entitled my third book, published in 2019, The Petersburg Regiment: A History of the 12th Virginia Infantry from John Brown's Hanging to Appomattox, 1859-1865.
The problem was that "Lee's regulars" occurred only once in one account whereas "the Petersburg regiment" occurred in several accounts by more than one person. Lee's Regulars seemed to me to be very sharp practice, really stretching it, while The Petersburg Regiment was far more defensible. The Petersburg Regiment probably alienated some readers from a tome that the late Ed Bearss, who had read drafts of this and my previous books, called "One of a score or so of outstanding unit histories." The Petersburg Regiment also won the 2019 Distinguished Writing Award in Unit History from the Army Historical Foundation. It's as detailed a history of a Confederate regiment as exists, though by no means a typical Confederate regiment.
I'm now at work on my fifth book, which I'm calling Vicksburg's Craters, With a Brief Epilogue on Why Grant Did Not Apply Their Lesson at Petersburg. I walked that back from Grant's Vicksburg Craters, With a Brief Epilogue on Why Grant Did Not Apply Their Lesson to Lee at Petersburg. "Grant's Vicksburg Craters" made it sound as if Grant were more involved in a regular approach than an army commander would ever have been. If anyone's name belonged in front of "Vicksburg's Craters" it would have been the engineer (Andrew Hickenlooper) who dug most of the regular approach (Logan's Approach, one of the 14 regular approaches at Vicksburg) that produced the first two military mine explosions in U. S. History. So I reduced the beginning of the title to "Vicksburg's Craters."
"Why Grant Did Not Apply Their Lesson To Lee" exaggerated Lee's role. The book is focused very narrowly on Logan's Approach (named after the division commander on whose front the approach was dug), what Grant learned from the failure of the assault that followed the first mine detonation on June 25, 1863, why he therefore would not launch an assault after the second mine explosion on July 1, 1863, and why he did not apply the lesson at Petersburg that he had learned at Vicksburg. Lee had nothing to do with why Grant did not apply that lesson.
So while getting Grant and Lee into the title would doubtlessly help sell books, it would in this case leave readers feeling as if they had been misled into buying a book that did not deliver what it promised. Authors must deliver what the titles of their books promise.
