Eyewitness Reports: The Inquirer's Live Coverage of the American Civil War

This is not just another academic history book about the Civil War. Veteran Philadelphia Inquirer staff writer Edward Colimore takes us behind the headlines of victories and defeats to re-create a "reporter's notebook" from the front lines of battle. This is the story of the newsmen who covered the world's first instant-news war, transmitting stories long distances over telegraph wires and traveling hundreds of miles on horseback and steam-driven trains. This is what it was like to be a correspondent covering the tragedy, bravery, ineptitude and daily drama of the War Between the States "live."

Adding to the uniqueness of this book, you will find 22 Inquirer Front Page reproductions, 25 maps, 64 illustrations and photos, and much more from the actual time period as the story unfolded.

Edward Colimore has been a staff writer and editor at The Philadelphia Inquirer for more than 20 years. He was a staff reporter at the Baltimore News American for 10 years before coming to The Inquirer in 1982.

Colimore is a Baltimore native and received a bachelor of science degree from Towson University, where he majored in political science and history.

He has written several hundred articles about the Civil War, most of them focusing on historic sites in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia, and Washington, D.C. He has reported on battle reenactments in several states; the recovery of the massive turret of the ironclad USS Monitor off Cape Hatteras, N.C.; and the modern-day Pentagon retrial of Dr. Samuel Mudd, who set assassin John Wilkes Booth’s leg. He retraced Booth’s escape route and wrote about a battle in a Baltimore courtroom to disinter and identify his remains. Colimore is also the author of The Philadelphia Inquirer’s Guide to Historic Philadelphia.