The Best Civil War Books, a list.
Happened to stumble over this list on The Daily beast.... thought it was interesting.
"Compiling a list of essential books about the war is an absurd task, simply because—no kidding—so many are essential. Try to imagine another subject where you omit writers of the caliber of William McFeely, Bruce Catton, T. Harry Williams, or Burke Davis. So consider this list a mere starting point. The more you read about the war, the more you will want to read (don’t say you weren’t warned). And when you tire of history, there’s Civil War fiction. But that’s a subject for another list. So this list is missing some great ingredients. Still, you have to start somewhere."
click here for the list:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/04/15/10-best-books-on-the-american-civil-war.html?cid=topic:mainpromo1
= new reply since forum marked as read
McPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom was on my reading list in grad school, and was one of the more enjoyable reads. Great coverage for a one volume work.
Faust's This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War I found fascinating because it explained the war's significance to the rise of spiritualism in post-Civil War America.
A few I would add to the list:
Gordon Rhea's trilogy on Grant's 1864 Overland Campaign:
The Battle of the Wilderness May 5–6, 1864.
The Battles for Spotsylvania Court House and the Road to Yellow Tavern, May 7-12, 1864 and
Cold Harbor: Grant and Lee, May 26-June 3, 1864. I didn't find the book on Cold Harbor as compelling as the others, but it may simply have been the nature of what he had to try and make sense of in that volume; or, I could simply be dense. My wife casts one vote for "dense."
Gregory A. Coco's A Strange and Blighted Land -- Gettysburg: The Aftermath of a Battle. addreses something not often covered in other studies...what it was like for the civilians, etc., who had to deal with the battlefield both armies left behind.
Noah Andre Trudeau's Gettysburg: A Testing of Courage because of the manner in which he broke the battle down on a timeline.
and
William Freehling's The South Vs. The South: How Anti-Confederate Southerners Shaped the Course of the Civil War which was interesting because it educated me on the fact that "the South" was never a monolith when it came to slavery, or the Civil War.
Man...you start thinking about it, and the lists could go on for days. 
Good to see you! 
Gregory A. Coco's A Strange and Blighted Land -- Gettysburg: The Aftermath of a Battle.
sounds interesting to me.
I read a lot of social historys.
Give Coco's book a read if you find the time. Most books don't really touch on what the aftermath of these enormously destructive slug-fests were like for the civilian populations that were left to pick up the pieces.
We took a two week road trip through part of the southeast last year, and thoroughly enjoyed it. Virginia, North and South Carolina, the Savannah corner of Georgia...what beautiful country. It sounds from your profile like you are a Seattle girl who fell in love with Alabama. I've driven through the state twice, but never really spent time there.
Still get as much rain, but usually in one day as opposed to all week!
Some great writers from this area, Rick Bragg tops among them.
Hope you get another chance to visit the SE...truly gorgeous esp. in late spring.
...by Edward Gray Seville
OK, so it's not a real book. It's a fictional work about the Civil War in a Stephen King novella ("The Breathing Method"
, but I always thought it was a great title. It *should* be a book about the Civil War.