"Dear Professor Newsome, Professor Horn, and Professor Selby—
"I am pleased to report that we are planning to issue your book, Civil War Talks, in paperback in our fall 2024 season. Congratulations on your book’s continuing sales!
"Your book will be announced as “New in Paper” in our spring 2024 catalog, so that libraries and our sales representatives will be reminded of its continued availability.
"We are delighted at the continued success of your book. Many thanks for your help.
"Best,
"Wren
"Wren Morgan Myers
"Senior Project Editor
"University of Virginia Press"
Civil War Talks: Further Reminiscences of George S. Bernard & His Fellow Veterans (Charlottesville, 2012) will be reissued this year by the University of Virginia Press, this time in paperback.
Civil War Talks is the George S. Bernard's War Talks of Confederate Veterays (Petersburg, 1892).
Highlights of War Talks include Bernard's article on the Maryland Campaign of 1862, William Evelyn Cameron's article on Chancellorsville, John R. Turner's article on The Wilderness, and Bernard's article on The Crater. Bernard, Cameron and Turner all belonged to the 12th Virginia Infantry, called the Petersburg Regiment because six of its 10 companies hailed from the Cockade City.
The manuscript of Civil War Talks was ready for publication in 1896. Highlightss include articles by Bernard on Seven Pines, the Seven Days, the Gettysburg Campaign, the battle for the Weldon Railroad, focused on August 19, 1864, and the battle of Burgess Mill, October 27, 1864.
Somehow the manuscript of Civil War Talks disappeared before it could be published. My fellow author Hampton Newsome, Esq., and I were reconstructing it from old newspapers when the manuscript reappeared at a flea market in 2004, was purchased for fifty dollars and was sold for fifteen thousand dollars to the Museum of Western Virginia History. Hampton and I signed on to edit it with Professor John G. Selby. The University of Virginia Press published it in 2012 but it has been out of print recently.
But now it will be returning in paperback.
Civil War Talks is one of the most important books on the siege of Petersburg since...War Talks of Confedeerate Veterans. Both belong on the shelf of every student of the Petersburg Campaign.
Bernard was the first historian of the 12th Virginia Infantry, the Petersburg Regiment. I, as the most recent historian of the regiment (The Petersburg Regiment in the Civil War: A History of the 12th Virginia Infantry from John Brown's Hanging to Appomattox (Savas Beatie, 2019) (winner of the 2019 Army Historical Foundation Distinguished Writing Award for Unit History), drew heavily on Bernard's work.
