Lance J. Herdegen

Lance J. Herdegen's latest release (with William J.K. Beaudot) is a SavasBeatie reprint of his award-winning "In the Bloody Railroad at Gettysburg: The Sixth Wisconsin of the Iron Brigade and its Famous Charge." His previous work is "The Iron Brigade in Civil War and Memory: The Black Hats from Bull Run to Appomattox and Thereafter." His earlier book, "Those Damned Black Hats! The Iron Brigade in the Gettysburg Campaign" (Savas Beatie, 2008), won an Army Historical Foundation Distinguished Writing Award. He is former Director of the Institute for Civil War Studies at Carroll University and presently works as historical consultant for the Civil War Museum of the Upper Middle West at Kenosha, Wisconsin. "I was drawn to the Civil War when my father brought home a rifle-musket he found while helping a neighbor clean a shed. I was totally entranced and I began to read everything I could find on the 1861-1865 period. As a true son of Wisconsin, it is difficult to escape not being interested in the Iron Brigade even though my own distant kinsman was killed with the 14th Wisconsin at Shiloh. One of the first books I discovered was Rufus Dawes' "Service with the Sixth Wisconsin Volunteers. "I was a reporter for the United Press International wire service most of my adult life. As a result, I am sure I am influenced by the events I covered during the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. A professor of mine at Marquette University, Dr. Frank Klement, who wrote four good books on the Civil War, said he believed that reporters always got the first chance to write history. I guess what I am doing now is just an extension of my earlier UPI work. When I start writing about a battle or incident from the Civil War, I pretty much let the actual sources take me where they will." Included among his other honors are: The Iron Brigade Association Award, The Harry S. Truman Award of the Civil War Round Table of Kansas City; The Award of Merit, State Historical Society of Wisconsin; The Gambrinus Prize, Milwaukee County Historical Society, and the Service Award of The Civil War Round Table of Milwaukee. He lives in Walworth County, Wisconsin.