My friend Steve Recker has announced that his upcoming book Rare Images of Antietam will be out and available before the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Antietam.
The book is 152 pages with seventy featured images and hundreds of supporting images.
Steve is scheduled for a talk at the battlefield at 1pm on Friday, September 14th and a book signing at 1pm on Saturday September 15th.
I have known Steve through church and music connections, and it is he who got me involved in the Antietam Battlefield Guides program that he initiated about 6-7 years ago. Steve previously spent a great deal of time at Gettysburg and developed eventually both the Virtual Gettysburg and Virtual Antietam web pages and photographic resources. As he began the Guides program, he encouraged me to make the attempt to be a part of it. In that it is a very academic and very rigorous process, it appealed much to the geeky research side of my persona!! And this has proven to be a very enriching part of my life – now about 380 tour groups later.
I am so much looking forward to this book because I know it will so significantly enhance my ability to bring the Battlefield alive to visitors. Guests love to see old pictures and realize they are standing at that very location where the photo was taken. Suddenly, the 100-150 years does not seem quite so remote. For example, the picture of the veterans of the 20th NY on the 100th anniversary of the battle ALWAYS elicits a verbal response from visitors.
So thanks Steve for all the collecting, the vision, the work for this to get completed. I’ll buy one! At least!
And Steve: With this cover picture of the Mansfield sign … let me warn you, you are going to get descendants and various others taking sides and commenting about that picture and where it is and ‘who done it’ stuff! This part of the War has never ended!
Randy Buchman
Enfilading Lines 