 | Who Wore What?: Women's Wear 1861-1865 by Juanita Leisch
Buy new: $25.60 / Used from: $23.41 Excellent resource on women's clothing. Discusses age-appropriate fashions & dispells many myths. A must-buy early on. The $ spent on this book will help you avoid wasting $ on inaccurate stuff.
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 | Fashions and Costumes from Godeys Ladys Book: Including 8 Plates in Full Color by Stella Blum
Buy new: $11.01 / Used from: $5.30 Good inspiration for dress design. Should be used in conjunction with "Who Wore What," however, as Godey's did not illustrate actual dresses. More like the Vogue of the 19th century.
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 | Dating Fabrics: A Color Guide 1800-1960 by Eileen Trestain
Buy new: $16.47 / Used from: $14.74 Well-organized, useful guide to what types of calico look "period."
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 | Past into Present: Effective Techniques for First-Person Historical Interpretation by Stacy F. Roth
Buy new: $21.55 / Used from: $10.71 Without a doubt, the best reference on "first person" interpretation. "Ultimate Character Development List" at end is worth the price of the book.
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 | The Encyclopedia of Civil War Usage: An Illustrated Compendium of the Everyday Language of Soldiers and Civilians by Webb B. Garrison
Buy new: $19.66 / Used from: $2.71 If you want to incorporate colloquial phrases from the times into your speech, here's a great place to learn it. Main drawback = heavy emphasis on military terms, less mid-19th c. everyday slang.
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 | Civil War Era Etiquette: Martine's Handbook & Vulgarisms in Conversation by Arthur Martine
Buy new: $15.95 / Used from: $9.85 Guidebooks on expected conduct are delightfully insightful. Just remember, if they had to write books on the subject, then everybody WASN'T acting this way.
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 | Quilts from the Civil War: Nine Projects, Historic Notes, Diary Entries by Barbara Brackman
Buy used from: $32.95 More than just a quilt book. Discusses women's roles in the war, including Sanitary Commission; textile history; blockade; lots of originals. Northern emphasis.
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 | Southern Quilts: Surviving Relics of the Civil War by Bets Ramsey
Buy used from: $46.98 Combines stories of southern women with beautiful photographs of original quilts.
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 | Ersatz in the Confederacy: Shortages and Substitutes on the Southern Homefront (Southern Classics Series) by Mary Elizabeth Massey
Buy new: $14.95 / Used from: $8.50 Blockade caused shortages for 75% of everyday items. Massey details how they coped with the shortages by substituting & manufacturing items at home. Essential if you portray a southerner.
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 | Blockaded Family: Life in So. Alabama by Parthenia Antoinette Hague
Buy new: $11.66 / Used from: $1.10 Post-war memoir focusing especially on spinning & weaving fabric & other ways family coped with blockade. Seems to give a fairly rosy account of their difficulties.
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 | Refugee Life in the Confederacy by Mary Elizabeth Massey
Buy new: $18.95 / Used from: $8.45 Thorough discussion about lives of persons displaced in the South during Civil War. Discusses housing, what they packed, attempts to join new communities, dealings with armies, etc.
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 | A Woman's Civil War: A Diary with Reminiscences of the War, from March 1862 (Wisconsin Studies in Autobiography) by Cornelia Peake McDonald
Buy new: $20.95 / Used from: $6.59 Extremely fascinating journal by a middle-class Winchester woman. Describes her experiences dealing with the occupying Union army & her life as a refugee.
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 | A Southern Woman's Story by George C. Rable
Buy new: $18.95 / Used from: $5.00 Fairly interesting account of assisting in a hospital in Richmond.
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 | Sarah Morgan: The Civil War Diary Of A Southern Woman by Charles East
Buy new: $12.96 / Used from: $0.43 Just starting this one. Sarah's youthful perspective is passionate & refreshing Widely recommend as a good description of refugee life.
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 | Mothers of Invention: Women of the Slaveholding South in the American Civil War by Drew Gilpin Faust
Buy used from: $3.00 Excellent overview. Explores the ways in which the war transformed traditional gender roles among middle- and upper-class southern women.
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 | The Life of Johnny Reb: The Common Soldier of the Confederacy by Bell Irvin Wiley
Buy used from: $0.45 No civilian should be without a basic understanding of soldiers' experiences. Fascinating read! Seems to be major source for Ken Burns' documentary.
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 | Life of Billy Yank: The Common Soldier of the Union by Bell Irvin Wiley
Buy new: $14.25 / Used from: $0.34 Haven't read it, but given the above rationale, if you reenact as a northerner, you should know something about soldier life.
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 | Other Powers: the Age of Suffrage, Spiritualism, and the Scandalous Victoria Woodhull by Barbara Goldsmith
Buy new: $12.23 / Used from: $0.01 Although this book doesn't focus on the Civil War, it provides a great history of many social movements of the times--suffrage, spiritualism, free love, etc. Reads like "Peyton Place" of the 19th c.
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 | The Old Sturbridge Village Cookbook, 2nd: Authentic Early American Recipes for the Modern Kitchen
Buy used from: $3.91 Excellent source of information on hearth cooking. Provides period recipes from Lydia Child's 1829 cookbook with modern adaptations. Great for living history demonstrations.
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 | Treasure in a Cornfield: The Discovery & Excavation of the Steamboat Arabia by Greg Hawley
Buy used from: $7.80 Many good pictures of items salvaged from the Arabia, which sank in 1856. Answers many "did they have that?" questions.
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