The future of this blog

Two posts from my November trip to Ireland gained the most hits of the blog’s entries of the last two months. our-war.com continues to focus primarily on the Civil War with an emphasis on New Hampshire's experience, but I have begun expanding the content in recent weeks. Four posts since Oct. 15 on the top 10 list are non-Civil War.

My immediate future as a blogger is somewhat cloudy. In the new year, I might begin following the New Hampshire presidential primary campaign closely, using the blog as the medium. As a working journalist (not that I'm not one now, in a different sense), I took part in the coverage of eight presidential primaries, from 1980 through 2008. I might have the stomach for one more.

I am also negotiating to begin work on the third book in a trilogy on New Hampshire’s Civil War experience. I’ve been thinking about this prospect for more than a year. Last week, on an icy, drizzly night, I spoke to a large and engaged audience at the Amherst Historical Society. The questions were challenging and interesting and led me to think such a book would find an audience. If I pursue this, I will probably use our-war.com to share research in progress, as I've done from time to time during the last year.

Here are the 10 posts from the last two months with the most reader traffic since Nov. 15:

1. As its centenary nears, the Easter Rising provokes debate

2. A  symbol of remembrance or ‘poppyganda?’

3. Finding Private Lamprey: the sequel

4. A temporary grave

5. On the platform with Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg

6. Hannah Duston took an axe

7. ‘A neat and readable book’

8. Little Round Top

9. The Civil War at 100

10. (tie) Remembering the Great War

           

             It would be pleasant to linger here

And here are the top 25 all-time, ranging in hits from 128 to 526. The numbers in parentheses are last month’s rankings:

1. Urgent! Telegram from Gettysburg (1)

2. Farewell, my teacher (2)

3. Exeter’s Civil War general (3)

4. The soldier’s story behind the love story, Part I (4)

5. A Gettysburg journal (6)

6. Did Abraham Lincoln really free the slaves? (5)

7. The Civil War: ‘It was not my fault,’ Buchanan insists (8)

8. Faces of Fort Wagner, Olustee and Andersonville (7)

9. Unpacking the new ‘Gettysburg’ (9)

10. Backstage with Billy Collins (10)

11. Gallery: Faces of the Fighting Fifth (part one) (12)

12. (tie) Harnessing the power of the telling detail (11)

            

             Kennedy gave FDR too much credit, shortchanged Ike (13)

14. My friend Chester (14)

15. The soldier’s story behind the love story, Part II (15)

16. History’s touch (19)

17. July 2, 1863, Rose’s Woods, Gettysburg (17)

18. How did Lincoln Republicans morph into Obama Democrats? (16)

19. A riddle wrapped up in an enigma (22)

20. Gallery: Old soldiers (2), a New England brigade (21)

21. Emails from afar and a happy coincidence (18)

22. A gruesome death (20)

23. (tie) ‘Curses to Old Abe’ (25)

             One school’s proud Civil War heritage (–)

25. A kick in the pants at Chancellorsville (23)