As I suspect most of you know, I do not feature much in the way of infantry content here. I have nothing against the infantry, but I am a student of the cavalry. Still, from time to time, an infantry study or a battle study comes along that is simply too good to ignore. Such is Robert E. L. Krick’s The Battle of Gaines’s Mill, Vol 1, To the Banks of the Chickahominy. Few authors today spend half a lifetime studying a battle and a battlefield. Krick not only spent half a lifetime studying the battle and the campaigns around Richmond, he spent half a lifetime on the ground where the battles around Richmond took place. I am confident in saying that no one knows the ground more intimately than he does. The combination of archival and terrain study over those many years, as well as his masterful writing, has resulted in a narrative that will leave you waiting for volume 2. And the cavalry makes an appearance in volume 2.

Through a unique partnership with the author, American Battlefield Trust is publishing Krick’s study, with the second volume expected later this year. You will receive a copy of volume 1 for a donation of $100 to American Battlefield Trust, directed specifically to their efforts to save ground at Gaines’s Mill. Call or go to the website and make your donation today. You will be handsomely rewarded. You will find the proper website page here.

Volume 1 is 455 pages, with 23 maps in the text and another inside the front cover, more images than I can count, chapter endnotes (you should read them closely), and an Order of Battle. You will not be disappointed.