FOR HOME AND COUNTRY

The final installment in the Young Readers' History of the Civil War series offers a collection of black-and-white images (photographs, portraits, paintings, engravings, reproductions of documents) and excerpts from letters, diaries, and songs of the period, accompanied by a running text. Fifteen short chapters cover such topics as uniforms, camp life, medical care, prisoners, and wartime news-gathering and photography. This volume may be most useful as an overview, since it necessarily restates much that is covered elsewhere in the series and repeats several pictures (in cropped or scaled-down form) from at least one of the companion books, Ina Chang's A Separate Battle (1991). The text is marred by awkward constructions (``several- hundred-yard-long area of trenches''), colloquial usage (``never caught on in popularity''), and lapses in grammar (``different than'' instead of ``different from'') and punctuation. There is no index. A very helpful timeline highlights major battles and political events, and in spite of the flaws, Bolotin and Herb put a uniquely human faceUnion and Confederate, soldier and civilian on this most bitter war. (glossary, bibliography) (Nonfiction. 10+)