Award-winning historian Leonard L. Richards gives us an authoritative and revealing portrait of an overlooked harbinger of the terrible battle that was to come.
When gold was discovered at Sutter's Mill in 1848, Americans of all stripes saw the potential for both wealth and power. Among the more calculating were Southern slave owners. By making California a slave state, they could increase the value of their slaves by 50 percent at least, and maybe much more. They could also gain additional influence in Congress and expand Southern economic clout, abetted by a new...
Award-winning historian Leonard L. Richards gives us an authoritative and revealing portrait of an overlooked harbinger of the terrible battle that...
For 130 years historians and military strategists have been obsessed by the battle of Chancellorsville. It began with an audaciously planned stroke by Union general Joe Hooker as he sent his army across the Rappahannock River and around Robert E. Lee's lines. It ended with that same army fleeing back in near total disarray -- and Hooker's reputation in ruins. This splendid account of Chancellorsville -- the first in more than 35 years -- explains Lee's most brilliant victory even as it places the battle within the larger canvas of the Civil War. Drawing on a wealth of first-hand sources,...
For 130 years historians and military strategists have been obsessed by the battle of Chancellorsville. It began with an audaciously planned stroke by...
As most Americans of the 1860s fixed their attention on the battlefields of Shiloh and Manassas, another war raged on the largely unsettled Western frontier. This splendid work by the author of The Patriot Chiefs restores this "other" Civil War to its true, epic proportions. With formidable scholarship and irresistible narrative ease, Alvin M. Josephy, Jr., tells of the Yankee armada that foundered in the Louisiana bayous; of the bloody fighting on the ridges and prairies of the border states. where a Cherokee guerrilla leader was the last Confederate general to surrender -- two months after...
As most Americans of the 1860s fixed their attention on the battlefields of Shiloh and Manassas, another war raged on the largely unsettled Western fr...
Ernest Furgurson, author of Ashes of Glory and Chancellorsville 1863, brings his talents to a pivotal and often neglected Civil War battle-the fierce, unremitting slaughter at Cold Harbor, Virginia, which ended the lives of 10,000 Union soldiers. In June of 1864, the Army of the Potomac attacked heavily entrenched Confederate forces outside of Richmond, hoping to break the strength of Robert E. Lee and take the capital. Facing almost certain death, Union soldiers pinned their names to their uniforms in the forlorn hope that their bodies would be identified and buried....
Ernest Furgurson, author of Ashes of Glory and Chancellorsville 1863, brings his talents to a pivotal and often neglected Civil War batt...
The electrifying story of Raphael Semmes and the CSS Alabama, the Confederate raider that destroyed Union ocean shipping and took more prizes than any other raider in naval history. In July, 1862, Semmes received orders to take command of a secret new British-built steam warship, the Alabama. At its helm, he would become the most hated and feared man in ports up and down the Union coast and a Confederate legend. Now, with unparalleled authority and depth, and with a vivid sense of the excitement and danger of the time, Stephen Fox tells the story of Captain Semmes's...
The electrifying story of Raphael Semmes and the CSS Alabama, the Confederate raider that destroyed Union ocean shipping and took more prizes t...
More than 600,000 soldiers lost their lives in the American Civil War. An equivalent proportion of today's population would be six million. In This Republic of Suffering, Drew Gilpin Faust reveals the ways that death on such a scale changed not only individual lives but the life of the nation, describing how the survivors managed on a practical level and how a deeply religious culture struggled to reconcile the unprecedented carnage with its belief in a benevolent God. Throughout, the voices of soldiers and their families, of statesmen, generals, preachers, poets, surgeons,...
More than 600,000 soldiers lost their lives in the American Civil War. An equivalent proportion of today's population would be six million. In <...
In the bicentennial year of Lincoln's birth, here is the one indispensable book that provides all you need to know about our most revered president in a lively and memorable question-and-answer format.You will learn whether Lincoln could dunk a basketball or tell a joke. Was he the great emancipator or a racist? If he were alive today, could he get elected? Did he die rich? Did scientists raise Lincoln from the dead? From the seemingly lighthearted to the most serious Gerald Prokopowicz tackles each question with balance and authority, and weaves a complete, satisfying biography that will...
In the bicentennial year of Lincoln's birth, here is the one indispensable book that provides all you need to know about our most revered president in...
The greatest military historian of our time gives a peerless account of America s most bloody, wrenching, and eternally fascinating war. In this magesterial history and national bestseller, John Keegan shares his original and perceptive insights into the psychology, ideology, demographics, and economics of the American Civil War. Illuminated by Keegan s knowledge of military history he provides a fascinating look at how command and the slow evolution of its strategic logic influenced the course of the war. Above all, The American Civil War gives an intriguing account of how the...
The greatest military historian of our time gives a peerless account of America s most bloody, wrenching, and eternally fascinating war. In thi...
He was short, foul-mouthed, and so constitutionally pugnacious that he once thrashed a Southern train conductor who treated him rudely. He rose from the undistinguished rank of quartermaster to command the Union cavalry at the battles of Yellow Tavern (where he defeated his flamboyant rebel counterpart, J.E.B. Stuart) and Winchester. And when the Civil War was over, General Phil Sheridan continued to fight, whether that meant plunging into the bloody and byzantine politics of Reconstruction Louisiana or managing the inglorious war against the Plains Indians. This outstanding biography...
He was short, foul-mouthed, and so constitutionally pugnacious that he once thrashed a Southern train conductor who treated him rudely. He rose from t...
A sweeping history of the 1840s, Manifest Destinies captures the enormous sense of possibility that inspired America s growth and shows how the acquisition of western territories forced the nation to come to grips with the deep fault line that would bring war in the near future. Steven E. Woodworth gives us a portrait of America at its most vibrant and expansive. It was a decade in which the nation significantly enlarged its boundaries, taking Texas, New Mexico, California, and the Pacific Northwest; William Henry Harrison ran the first modern populist campaign, focusing on...
A sweeping history of the 1840s, Manifest Destinies captures the enormous sense of possibility that inspired America s growth and shows how the...