This is the first book National Geographic Books ever subcontracted to an outside designer. It's a wonderful volume that packs an enormous amount of useful information into a small space. It covers each state where significant Civil War action took place and then reviews the events at each of the battlefield sites within that state.

We designed a look for the state overview pages that make them easy to find and help them function as dividers for the sections they head up. Then we put a lot of energy into the design of the battlefield maps, reviewing every Civil War map we could find. Some were wonderful-looking aerial illustrations showing troops in the heat of battle. Nice, but not really showing the progress of the battles. Most of the rest showed troop movements and then chose to either show ground cover (trees, swamps, etc.) or topography (ridges, mountains, etc.) It became clear that to fully understand the decision-making of the field generals you needed all that information. Working with R. R. Donnelley Cartographic in Lancaster, PA, we came up with a system that allowed ground cover and topography to be shown on the same map. At that point Donnelley and the NGS editors took responsibility for assembling all the historically accurate details (an impressive process in itself).