From the Kentucky Campaign to Tullahoma, Chickamauga to Missionary Ridge, junior officer Joshua K. Callaway took part in some of the most critical campaigns of the Civil War. His twice-weekly letters home, written between April 1862 and November 1863, chronicle his gradual change from an ardent Confederate soldier to a weary veteran who longs to be at home. Callaway was a schoolteacher, husband, and father of two when he enlisted in the 28th Alabama Infantry Regiment at the age of twenty-seven. Serving with the Army of the Tennessee, he campaigned in Mississippi, Kentucky, Tennessee, and north Georgia. Along the way this perceptive observer and gifted writer wrote a continuous narrative detailing the activities, concerns, hopes, fears, discomforts, and pleasures of a Confederate soldier in the field. Whether writing about combat, illness, encampments, or homesickness, Callaway makes even the everyday aspects of soldiering interesting. This large collection, seventy-four letters in all, is a valuable historical reference that provides new insights into life behind the front lines of the Civil War. With gripping clarity and insight, Callaway's Civil War letters detail a soldier's life in camp and on campaign. Callaway, a 28-year-old lieutenant in Company K, 28th Alabama Infantry Regiment, was also a schoolteacher, husband, and father who could not resist his state's call to arms in 1862. These 74 letters, written to his loving wife from April 1862 to November 1863, chronicle a young man's transition from eager idealist to war-weary veteran. Callaway and his regiment participated in major and minor actions in Mississippi, Kentucky, Tennessee, and north Georgia. He initially thought war to be fun, but the harsh realities of battle soon changed that attitude. His observations are strikingly bold and painfully accurate. Sadly, he was mortally wounded at Missionary Ridge in 1863. A wonderful treasury of Civil War lore; highly recommended for libraries, historians, and Civil War buffs.?William D. Bushnell, USMC (ret.), Brunswick, Me. Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. These unusually revealing Civil War letters vividly convey the hardships of camp life, the emotional highs and lows of the battlefield, and the various attachments to home, family, and community. Callaway was an articulate and perceptive observer of the conditions and people around him. This is a rich and very readable collection, superbly edited. (John Inscoe author of Mountain Masters: Slavery and the Sectional Crisis in Western North Carolina ) With gripping clarity and insight, Callaway's Civil War letters detail a soldier's life in camp and on campaign. . . . A wonderful treasury of Civil War lore; highly recommended for libraries, historians, and Civil War buffs. (Library Journal) Callaway proved a perceptive and thoughtful witness to the crisis. His letters home are rich and incisive, not only because they detail soldier life in the Army of the Tennessee, but because they highlight painful separations endured by countless husbands and fathers on both sides of the war. ( Civil War History ) Personal insights into the daily life of the common Civil War soldier Judith Lee Hallock is the author of General James Longstreet in the West and Braxton Bragg and the Confederate Defeat . She lives in New York and is a longtime member of the New York Civil War Roundtable, for which she has served both as president and vice-president. Used Book in Good Condition