[4] A 1988 bibliography retold a bit of the history of the compilation:[5] Edited by one of the time's leading historians, Francis T. Miller, it first appeared as a series of paperback, magazine-like booklets.

The work contains 3,389 images that constitute an important source on the war's appearance - its battlefields, common soldiers, officers, forts, diseases, camp scenes, army movements, and materiel."

[10] That early assessment notwithstanding though, a first five-volume (each collecting two of the original volumes) facsimile reprint was already released in 1957 by New York City publisher Thomas Yoseloff with an introduction by Henry Steele Commager, a contemporary American historian (OCLC 444833).

[9] And as if to underscore that the early 1950s assessment had become completely invalid by then, a second ten-volume facsimile reprint edition was in the same year released by Castle Books, also operating out off New York (OCLC 1118180).

[11] As a result, it is not too hard to come by an edition of the set at affordable prices on the second-hand book markets as there are many around; even the original 1911 edition appeared to have been disseminated in fairly large numbers at the time (30,327 copies sold within four months after editorial work on the collection was completed, according to a contemporary bookseller's letter to interested parties[6]) as they are to this day regularly offered on auction sites like eBay.com, albeit at slightly higher prices.

[12] Besides correcting the historical inaccuracies in the captions, the huge post-1911 advancements in reproduction printing techniques of photographic images was furthered as an additional motivation to have embarked on the project.

A budget-priced mass market hardcover in dust jacket publication at 256 pages, it was essentially an even more abridged variant of the 2000 Tess Print release.