Documenting the rise and fall of the Confederacy between 1861 and 1865 was a new figure on the battlefield: the war photographer. The Civil War was the first major conflict to be recorded by cameras and men such as Mathew Brady, George Barnard and Timothy O'Sullivan made their names by capturing unforgettable images of death and destruction.

Civil War Battlefields Then and Now uses many of these photographers' classic images and revisits the sites to show how they look today. Arranged chronologically, the book begins with the attack on Fort Sumter in 1861, journeys through the major battle sites in Virginia, and ends at Appomattox Court House in 1865, with the epitaph of the Lincoln assassination.