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Before the rise of "professional" academic history, there were devoted Brahmins of a literary bent (George Bancroft, Francis Parkman and Henry Adams) and skilled researchers and chroniclers, men such as J. Thomas Scharf of Maryland history fame and - the most prolific of all - Ben Lossing of New York, who, since they made their living by writing history, could rightly be labelled "professional" after all. Every literate history lover in the mid-to-late 19th century knew of Lossing and his work; he may not have been academically trained, but he knew where to look for evidence, did the digging we would expect him to do, and wrote with a flair for the dramatic. In his "Pictorial Field-Book of the Civil War", Lossing takes an "on-the-scene approach" to the Civil War - visiting the sites of battles and other events, making sketches of these places, talking with people about their experiences - that earned his earlier "Pictorial Field-Book of the Revolution" and "Pictorial Field-Book of the War of 1812" a wide and enthusiastic readership.