The Civil War Today: An elegant interactive trip into American history via iPad

I find the Civil War to be one of the most fascinating periods of American history. The struggle that tore our nation apart 150 years ago occurred during a time of great social upheaval, continued westward expansion and technological changes that shaped the next century.

When I saw that HISTORY had released The Civil War Today for iPad (US$7.99), I glanced at a description of the app and then bought it immediately. What I've been enjoying since April 12, 2011 is a well-designed interactive daily trip into the events that happened exactly 150 years ago. It's as if my iPad has become a time machine taking me back into the past, and as the war heats up and comes to its inevitable conclusion over the next four years, I'll be experiencing the battles, the tragedies and the personal stories of the people who lived through the Civil War.

Read more to see my review of The Civil War Today, and be sure to check out the gallery below.

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The Main Elements

The Civil War Today is made up of a number of elements that are updated daily to provide you with the "latest news" 150 years later. Once the app is launched each day, you're looking at what appears to be a newspaper front page. Considering that the telegraph and newspapers were the internet of the 1860s, this is a very convincing recreation of the news apparatus of the day.

Each one of the daily newspapers has a headline article titled "This Day in Civil War History" and several side elements: the Quote of the Day, Casualties to Date, Photo of the Day, In the Headlines, A Day In The Life, The Photo Gallery, Civil War by the Numbers, a Featured Story, The North South Quiz and Battle Maps.

The material in this app is from publicly available records, with a great deal coming from the Library of Congress. It's interesting to see how curation methods for historical materials have changed. For many years, the Library of Congress would just stamp the date of receipt right onto the document -- I'm hopeful that they now mark the documents with a removable bar code or something to eliminate the irritating stamps on photos and maps.

These different elements expand to fill the iPad screen when double-tapped, which makes the app much more readable. A Day in the Life features the diaries of many people who were alive at the time -- not only do you see the handwritten diaries where available, but a "translation" of the ornate cursive writing into much more readable text. One of my only complaints about the app right now is that for some of the diaries, there's a message stating that "[so and so's] involvement in the war begins on such and such a date." If I'm not going to be able to read that person's diary for over a year, why even show them in this section?

Most of the images, either maps, photos or drawings, use the familiar reverse-pinch gesture so that you can zoom in for details. The In the Headlines section uses digitized images of actual daily newspapers of the era, so to read any section of a broadsheet, you really need to be able to zoom in. The newspapers are fascinating to read, with poetry, short stories, advertisements for patent medicines and reports about crops mixing in with telegraphed news about the war.

Civil War by the Numbers throws out an interesting daily statistical tidbit about the war, like "the number of days it took for a letter to travel from San Antonio, Texas to Washington, D.C." (10) or "the average number of soldiers in a military division, both USA and CSA" (12,000). There's also a daily casualty count -- at this point 150 years ago, the count was rather low. As the major battles of the Civil War heat up, those numbers will skyrocket.

The Featured Story provides a longer discussion of a particular topic. For example, there was a story last week about "Civil War Technology" that talked about the new weapons, the advent of balloons and war ships, how railroads and the telegraph affected the outcome of the war, and how the Civil War was the first war documented by photography. These stories have been quite detailed and very interesting.

At this point, the Battle Maps are mainly area maps of cities and regions that will play an important role in the Civil War. As the war continues, I'd expect to see detailed maps that show the advance and retreat of the forces in a particular battle.

Game Center Integration

If you have a little bit of gaming instincts in you, then The Civil War Today will gain your interest with its integration with Game Center. You can get points and unlock achievements for a number of things. For example, if you'd like to send a Twitter message to someone via the app, you have to do it using the telegraphic language of the Civil War era -- Morse Code. There's a telegraph key and a hint to the dits and dahs of Morse Code, and you tap your message in on the key. Send a few messages, and you'll unlock the "Telegraphist" achievement. There are nine separate achievements at this point, all of which are denoted by medals encased in a glass and wood case. To see how you're doing in comparison to your friends, just tap on the Game Center icon on your iPad.

The Civil War Today also has a daily quiz; the questions in the North South Quiz have you answer a history question by selecting the appropriate side in the conflict. You can gain points every day, so it's important to open the app each day to see what's new and answer the quiz question.

Conclusion

The Civil War Today is a wonderful iPad app, and it's perfect for anyone young or old who wants to learn more about this turbulent time in America's history. At US$7.99 for four years of daily updated information, it's a bargain (that's about a half a cent per day). The interactivity of the app makes it compelling to launch every day, the gaming aspects provide a bit of fun competition, and the 150 year old content is fascinating to read and view. We can only hope that HISTORY decides to make similar interactive apps for the two World Wars and other periods in world history.