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This is my latest purchase from Osprey Publishing's "Men-at-Arms" series.  It's a new release I learned about from the company's mailing list.  I'm not a big student of the War Between the States, even though I grew up here in the South.  A title about the Irishmen in the war caught my attention, however, because of the large Irish community that lived in ante-bellum New Orleans.

Being the second-largest port city in America (behind NYC) for most of the 19th and 20th centuries, New Orleans naturally attracted a large number of immigrants.  The Irish, escaping famine and oppression at home, found New Orleans and the areas of the Louisiana Purchase offered a lot more than home.  The Irish took on many of the dirty manual labor jobs on which slave owners wouldn't risk their property, such as construction of the navigation canals that connected New Orleans with Lake Pontchartrain and the Gulf of Mexico.  When North fought South, it was natural that Irishmen on either side would take up arms and defend their homes, even while thinking back to their Homeland.

Irish-American Units in the Civil War offers a state-by-state overview of the Irishmen serving with both the Union and the Confederacy.  The section on Louisiana's Irish troops to be fascinating.  The Louisiana Tigers, dressed Zouave-style in blue  jackets with red-and-white striped pants are legendary, and their Irish heritage is detailed here. Because it deals with the Civil War, there are many more photographs than illustrations and paintings throughout the book, providing accurate views of uniforms.  

The eight pages of color plates, four Union, four Confederate, show the preponderance of green that Irish volunteers wore as part of their uniforms on both sides.  Two of the plates show some of the ante-bellum uniforms of Irish volunteer companies.  These are great examples of how the influence of mid-Victorian styles in Britain filtered over to the US, complete with high bearskin caps.  The plates stir the imagination, as one wonders what would be on the mind of an officer of the Montgomery Guard of the NY State Militia, as he walked through Manhattan on a leisurely Sunday afternoon in 1859.

As always, the book has a Selected Bibliography, which makes a great starting point for more in-depth research on the subject. 

I've been a fan of Osprey Publishing's "Men At Arms" series for over twenty years.  My first title in the series was about the British Third Second Regiment of Foot, The Buffs.  I saw the book in the rack at Hub Hobby Shop (formerly on St. Broad near Washington in the city, now out in Metairie post-K), and was hooked.  Hub would have the occasional title, and when they caught my eye, I'd pick them up.  As my interest in Napoleonic-era wargaming grew, my collection grew. 

There's three things about the series that I like:

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1.  Brief Regimental Histories.  Don't know who Napoleon's Chasseurs de la Garde Imperiale were?  Pick up Osprey's Chausseurs of the Guard and you'll get a solid introduction.  Same for The Black Watch, or The Grenadier Guards. 

2.  The Plates!  The color plates in each volume are the series' hallmark.  Each book has 8-10 pages of full-color illustrations of the subjects of that book.  Many of these illustrations are based on contemporary paintings, and all are done after painstaking research.  They're indespensible for period wargamers, model makers, and miniatures painters.

In addition to gamers, artists, and military history fans, the color plates in the M-A-A series offer the writer of historical fiction an incredible resource.  So many periods in history are defined by their wars, and many writers don't have a full appreciation for the uniforms of that period.  I'm always amazed by the number of people who try their hand at historical fiction in periods like the early 19th century that have no clue about military history.  Europe was at war for so long in the late 18th-early 19th that even civilian characters in any country would invariably encounter soldiers, sailors, and marines.  The M-A-A series gives the aspiring writer a visual on those characters.

3.  Excellent bibliographies.  For short books (they're 58-60 pages each), the authors of the series share their research with the reader.  That's how I came to buy Lachoque's quintessential work on La Garde Imperiale, Anatomy of Glory - I saw the book in the bibliography of Osprey's Chausseurs of the Guard, looked it over at the library, then bought it. 

Two weeks ago, I got my latest title in the series, Irish-American Units in the Civil War.  The Buffs is #10 in the series; this latest book is #448.  That's how successful the series has been for Osprey. 

The Men-At-Arms series has spawned some spin-offs as well, on battles, fortresses, and other military subjects.  I'll start with reviews of the M-A-A books, then work into the others as we go along.