Maps of Gettysburg Review & Thank You

Last night at the Rocky Mountain Civil War Roundtable meeting my buddy (and blog reader) Ian D. gave me a copy of Maps of Gettysburg by Bradley M. Gottfried as a gift for the hard work I do for the roundtable (its a labor of love, I don't mind doing it, but thanks to Ian for the book).

When I got home I looked through it. Can't say that I really read it. I read some areas but I looked at nearly every map, and that's what this book is for anyway. The basic layout of the book is that the right side page has a full page map and the facing page has the text for the map. So there is no need to flip from page to page to understand a map. Of course reading more than one at a time does make the whole make more sense but its not mandatory. In other words you could open the book at random and be able to understand that map without seeing any other pages.

As the son of a cartographer I know a thing or two about maps, having been around them my entire life. These maps are pretty good. There are a few design elements I'm not crazy about but those are very minor details. I only have one complaint, no times are listed on the maps. I understand that firm times are not possible but it would be nice to know that the action being depicted is at roughly 2-4 PM on July 2nd. I don't think that sort of vagueness is impossible to ask for.

Overall I like the book and would recommend it to everyone interested in Gettysburg. I had read enough good things about it that I intended to buy a copy, Ian just beat me to it. Thanks again to Ian.