In 1997, John Stanchak, an editor at Cowles Enthusiast Media (now part of Primedia), realized his vision of “a publication that contained the best, most up-to-date scholarship on the [Civil] war, but was edited with the amateur historian in mind,” with the publication of Columbiad: A Quarterly Review of the War between the States. In the four years the journal was published, it strived to lessen the rift between the scholarly world of professional historians and the “popular” history with which the general reader is more familiar. Now, a selection of the essays that best represent the successful balance between “serious scholarship” and a narrative reading style preferred by the educated layman has been collected in The Ongoing Civil War.

Herman Hattaway is Professor Emeritus of History and Religious Studies at the University of Missouri–Kansas City. He is the author or coauthor of numerous books, including Shades of Blue and Gray: An Introductory Military History of the Civil War (University of Missouri Press), Why the South Lost the Civil War, and How the North Won: A Military History of the Civil War, all past selections of the History Book Club.

Ethan S. Rafuse is the author of A Single Grand Victory: The First Campaign and Battle of Manassas and George Gordon Meade and the War in the East. He is Associate Professor of Military History at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.