I just got finished with Brent Nosworthy's book, Bloody Crucible of Courage, (Carroll & Graf, 2003). I'm sure many of you guys have already read this but for those of you who haven't, let me recommend it to you. The prose is accessible and he brings up many excellant questions about various things we CW buffs hold near-and-dear. A question he asks is should we consider the CW as the first modern war or the last musket war? Many of what we consider firsts were actually used in the Crimea or even earlier. Ironclads, for instance, have been around since the seventeenth century, (albeit in VERY small numbers).

Anyway, this is an excellant book. Don't let the number of pages deter you from picking it up if you get the chance.