Battle Lines is in stock and ready and to ship. Here are 5 reasons you should buy a copy.

5) The images are “heartbreaking” and “revelatory.” The panoramas are “breathtaking.” If you can’t trust the people who write promotional copy, who can you trust?

4) I asked Ben Bernanke, and there’s no better hedge against inflation than converting your cash into substantial holdings of graphic books.

3) Jonathan Fetter-Vorm needs a new boat.

2) Of all the things I’ve written, “Battle Lines” is the thing I hate the least.

1) You want to reward me for this bit of annoying self-promotion.

Seriously, just buy a copy already. If you do, I’ll stop bugging you.

If you’re interested, Slate just posted an excerpt from a chapter — on Appomattox and memory — from Battle Lines, the graphic history of the Civil War I’ve written with Jonathan Fetter-Vorm.

Perhaps my favorite story of the Civil War comes from Lee’s surrender to Grant at Appomattox. Here’s a short excerpt, below the fold, from a piece I wrote last year about that episode.

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Leonard Nimoy’s Spock made the most powerful case for the value of emotional intelligence* that I’ve ever seen. I’m also pretty sure that the Roanoke episode of “In Search Of…” made me the historian I am today. And, more important still, his life offscreen suggested that personal decency can far outstrip fame. RIP to a wonderful entertainer and a better person.

I’d like to think that he wouldn’t want this forgotten:

And here’s Nimoy on Roanoke:

Also, a friend points out, a great Jew:

* Yeah, it’s not a great phrase, but there it is.

My review of Bob Drury and Tom Clavin’s The Heart of Everything That Is came out in this week’s TLS. If you’d like to see the full text of the review, it’s below the fold.

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No, not my lovemaking, Battle Lines. Or so says Publishers Weekly. The full review, if you want to read it but have an irrational fear of clicking links, can be found below the fold.

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My friend Phillip Barron has put together a flip book of sample pages from Battle Lines. If you’re interested, you can check it out here or below.

Julie Schumacher’s Dear Committee Members captures the absurdity of the present moment in the hallowed halls of academe: the beleaguered state of the humanities; the way a shrinking pie has left even tenured scholars, already an insecure subset of the species, more fragile than usual; the fraught relationship between faculty and their administrative paymasters.

In all honestly, it’s not an important book by any measure. But it’s a very easy read. Schumacher organizes Dear Committee Members around a series of letters of recommendation written by a senior member of an English department at a small, Midwestern college. The conceit works well, and there are a number of laugh-out-loud scenes. You should read it for the lulz!

Here’s the actual Kirkus review mentioned below. It turns out we did get a star. I know you’re all relieved that I finally caught a break from the critics. Being so under-appreciated has been difficult, I admit, but I’m hopeful that things are looking up.