George Wentworth Alexander Higginson

If you’ve ever scribbled quick notes on a napkin just to remember the taste of a meal, you’ll get George Higginson. The guy carried a sketchbook everywhere during the Crimean War, drawing battles and bazaars with the same steady hand, bullets flew over his shoulder while he sketched a Circassian rug. His loose, ink-splashed pages read like a soldier’s diary you can flip through in seconds.

Tap his “Sketches made during the Campaign of 1854-55” to see how a war zone looked to a guy who cared more about light on a bayonet than glory on a monument.