Gateway to Gettysburg: The Second Battle of Winchester

Ephrata, Pennsylvania lawyer Larry B. Maier wrote Gateway to Gettysburg: The Second Battle of Winchester, published by Burd Street Press in 2002.

Burd Street is an imprint of White Mane Publishing. For those unfamiliar with White Mane, it’s far from my favorite publisher. For every good book they publish, there are ten really awful ones that had no business being published in the first place. This company is known for using crappy materials (thin, poor quality paper), indifferent production values, and no editing. My biggest complaint about it is that they do nothing to ensure that there is no plagiarism or copyright infringement. I am aware of at least two instances where authors who are friends of mine had their maps stolen and reprinted in White Mane books without their permission and without being paid royalties for the use of the maps. If that’s not bad enough, the management at White Mane takes the position that, by the time that someone finds out about the infringement and does something about it, they don’t care–they will already have made their money from the book. I sent a letter to the publisher on behalf of one of those authors complaining about the theft of my client’s maps, and didn’t even get the courtesy of a response. To me, that sort of attitude–a complete lack of business ethics and a total disregard for the law–speaks volumes for why this company has such an atrocious reputation. I’ve often said–and meant it–that if faced with the choice of never publishing another word again or having White Mane publish one of my books, I would choose never publishing another word again. I’ve heard rumors that White Mane is swirling around the drain, and I can only hope it’s true.

So, we begin with the proposition that Mr. Maier’s book has two strikes against it right out of the box. That’s a shame, but it is what it is.

Prior to the publication of this book, there was one other monograph dedicated to the Second Battle of Winchester. Charles Grunder and Prof. Brandon Beck published a short book on the battle as part of the H. E. Howard Virginia Battles and Leaders Series. Their book is decent, but it lacks depth. With only 85 pages of text, it simply cannot go into a great deal of detail. The best thing about their book is the walking/driving tour at the end of it.

The book itself is disappointing. While the coverage of the battle is reasonably thorough, the scope and depth of the research is disappointing. A review of the footnotes indicates that many of them cite to secondary sources, which indicates that Maier did not do the sort of research that he could have done in order to cover the topic completely. Many of those footnotes cite to the book by Grunder and Beck mentioned above, and not to the primary sources. Conversely, on the flip side, there are footnotes and not endnotes, something that I much prefer.

It also spends too much time discussing Maj. Gen. Robert H. Milroy. While Milroy is the central player in the drama, the book does not get to the topic of the Second Battle of Winchester for about 100 pages. Given that it’s a 330 page book, it means that about 1/3 of the book is devoted to stuff that doesn’t go to the heart of the subject. I actually blew off much of that stuff.

There are plenty of maps and illustrations, much to the author’s credit. He draws some solid conclusions, but the book fails to give the depth that serious historians crave. In short, this book left me wanting more, and also left me wondering how good it might have been if a real publisher with a competent editorial staff had brought it out, and not the incompetents at White Mane.

As stated in a previous post, the Second Battle of Winchester still has not had a definitive treatment, and continues to cry out for one.