The magazine incurs no additional cost or loss of space, the magazine retains its current visual appeal, and those of us who like to dig in and explore have the full means to do so.

As Craig said, being pointed in the right direction for further research plus being able to read the sources to understand the author’s arguments is extremely valuable for me.

I have almost all issues of Civil War History back to 1955 and agree with Brette that the older issues which contain less social history are much more interesting. BTW, I have several dozen old CWH available for trade to complete my collection of CWH, the Civil War Regiments series, and CWT (PM if interested: killsour@hotmail.com).

Larry Freiheit

As for footnotes in magazine articles, I can say that I’ve read plenty of them and they often (way, way too often) do not support what the author has concluded.

There is an audience (small) for traditional academic work. There is an audience (huge) for popular history without the bells and whistles. Dana is encouraging academics to preach to the folks who need salvation instead of to the choir. Based on who has been writing for CWT lately, I’d say some of them are taking his advice.

I am happy to defend my criticism of Dr. Faust’s abysmal book. You can read it here, if you wish.

http://booksfilmandmusic.com/2008/03/10/this-republic-of-suffering-by-drew-gilpin-faust-reviewed-must-history-hurt-so/

My credentials are irrelevent. If you disagree with the argument herein laid out, present your counter-argument.

Best Regards,
Daniel

As a current subscriber and collector of Civil War History, I’ve seen this trending away from Military History firsthand. I would estimate that currently something like two thirds of the articles focus on race while most of the rest focus on gender. In fact, Civil War History is the perfect example of what Dana is talking about when he says people think Social History is boring. It has become increasingly difficult to slog through some of the articles in Civil War History. I’ve got this weird anal thing where I can’t stand to skip articles in the magazines and journals I subscribe to, but it’s getting to the point where I might read one article, skim the other one or two, and just read some of the book reviews.

PS – I haven’t read Faust’s book so I’m not defending her; just saying that it takes some cajones to throw out something like that without some explanation.