J. Franklin Dyer's journal offers a rare perspective on three years of the Civil War as seen through the eyes of a surgeon at the front. The journal, taken from letters written to his wife, Maria, describes in lengthy and colorful detail the daily life of a doctor who began as a regimental surgeon in the Nineteenth Massachusetts Volunteers and was promoted to acting medical director of the Second Corps, Army of the Potomac. This firsthand account traces Dyer's attempts to manage his Gloucester household even as the Second Corps fought on the Peninsula, at Second Bull Run, Antietam,...