[1] Some titles focused on a specific topic, such as the blockade, and spies, but most volumes concentrated on the battles and campaigns, presented in chronological order.
Executed in hardcover, each volume was bound in silvery-gray padded faux leather, the cover endowed with in deep blue printed text imprints, and heavily embossed with Civil War symbology with an oval shaped illustration glued on.
Still, interested parties in other language territories were offered the opportunity to acquire the original American version via mail through their nearest Time-Life Books subsidiary, as was commonplace for the company at the time, typically by taking out a series subscription.
A 432-page excerpt hardcover in dust jacket variant edition, its chapter organization roughly following the series title order as released, was concurrently published in 1990 by two educational publishers, Prentice Hall and Silver Burdett Press, as "Brother against brother, Time-Life Books History of the Civil War" (ISBN 0139218181, 0671693859 respectively), as well as by Time-Life itself in a different dust jacket for the general populace under the same title (ISBN 0809478471), which was subsequently reprinted as "The Time-Life History of the Civil War" by Barnes & Noble Books in 1995 (ISBN 1566199026), featuring a newly designed dust jacket.
Renowned Civil War historian James M. McPherson (who had not contributed to the main series) provided the foreword for the excerpt edition.
[2] It explained why the series remained in print for well over a decade with its subsequent identical reprint runs in the late-1980s/mid-1990s, which were the ones also intended for dissemination abroad,[5] albeit untranslated.
In the early 2000s, three volumes of the main series were reissued in brown faux leatherette as otherwise unaltered installments by The History Channel Club under a full license from Time-Life Books then-owner Direct Holdings Global L.L.C.
These hardback versions are relatively rare on the used-book markets and the "Antietam" title in particular commands a higher after-market price than its Time-Life progenitor does.
The other collection volumes dealing with the Civil War do not have a Time-Life Books pedigree, but were drawn from the plethora of Osprey Publishing releases.
These included the preceding Collector's Library of the Civil War (1981–1985, 30 volumes, OCLC 41657774), a series consisting of smaller-sized deluxe, gilt-edged facsimile faux-leather bound reproductions of memoirs written by Civil War participants, actually already started before the main series and therefore conceivably the de facto source publication as editor Andrews considered it himself in effect.
Additionally, three stand-alone titles were released by Time-Life Books of which two were summarizing, general histories of the war, and, like Voices and A Narrative, making again use of the considerable pictorial archive the publisher had accumulated for the main series, including their own commissioned maps.
Like the original, the series was slated to become ten volumes long, but its release was cut short after only two volumes were actually released, "The Opening Battles" (ISBN 0783557256) and "Two Years of Grim War" (ISBN 0783557264),[6] due to the cessation of the Time-Life Books, Inc. division as a dedicated book publisher in the opening months of the following year.
[9] However, after the individual volumes of the set were selected to become among the very first for distribution experimentation through the regular book store retail channels alongside the publisher's hitherto traditional DTC-only channel (a business model that had started to slump for Time-Life Books around this time) as well, sales picked up dramatically, thereby becoming in Andrew's words "extremely successful in several different editions" and a sales triumph after all.
[11] The "Atlas" was apparently the bestseller of the three as bookstore chain Barnes and Noble asked for, and got, a license to reprint the volume themselves as an exclusive for their stores.
Re-titled "The Battle Atlas of the Civil War", the with a redesigned dust jacket furnished hardback reprint went up for sale in the Barnes and Noble stores in 1996.
The former held also true for the paperback volumes included in the box set as released that year by licensed Ann Arbor, Michigan-based publisher Tally Hall Press.
While the to "Arms, Equipment and Atlas of the Civil War" renamed box set itself was assigned an ISBN, the individual volumes were not, instead sporting the ones carried over from the originating 1991 edition.
Unlike the 1992 edition though, it was not a one-on-one copy of the set volume as the with a newly designed dust jacket endowed hardcover did not feature any imprints on the book itself and was assigned its own ISBN.
Additionally, all main series subscribers received a double-printed Civil War poster as a bonus gift with their first book which showed 1880s print reproductions of the uniforms from both armies on one side, and the used weaponry on the other, which customers were allowed to keep even if they decided to return the volume it came with.