Lyndon Johnson, when it comes to his role in the Vietnam War, is popularly portrayed as an irrational "hawkish" leader who bullied his advisers and refused to solicit a wide range of opinions. that depiction, David Barrett argues, is simplistic and far from accurate.

In this book, Barrett contends that Johnson's insistence on secrecy, plus his colorful personality, have overshadowed his approach to policymaking and his consideration of a wide spectrum of opinion from a variety of formal and informal advisers. Following a paper trail of memoranda, letters, diaries, and notes, Barrett not...

Following the fall of Atlanta, rebel commander John Bell Hood rallied his demoralized troops and marched them off the Tennessee, desperately hoping to draw Sherman after him and forestall the Confederacy's defeat. But Sherman refused to be lured and began his infamous "March to the Sea," while Hood charged headlong into catastrophe.

In this compelling dramatic account of a final and fatal invasion by the Confederate Army of Tennessee, Wile Sword illuminates the missed opportunities, senseless bloody assaults, poor command decisions, and stubborn pride that resulted in 23,500 Confederate...

June 6, 1944: the Allies launch the largest combined aerial and amphibious assault in modern history. Taking the Germans by surprise, they storm the heavily fortified defenses at the beachheads along the Normandy coast. The cost in allied lives is enormous (nearly 10,000 lost at Omaha alone), but the long-awaited Second Front is finally opened, marking the beginning of the end for Hitler's Third Reich.

We are still trying to come to grips with the impact of what General Dwight Eisenhower called "this great and noble undertaking." In D-Day 1944 twenty noted authors reassess the meanings...

As a war correspondent, Wilbur Fisk was an amateur, yet his letters to the Montpelier Green Mountain Freeman comprise one of the finest collections of Civil War letters in existence. "Literary gems," historian Herman Hattaway calls them. "It would be believable that some expert novelist had created them."

But Fisk was no novelist. He was a rural school teacher from Vermont, primarily self-educated, who enlisted in the Union Army simply because he believed he would regret it later if he didn't.

Unlike professional war correspondents, Private Fisk had no access to rank or headquarters....

Following a skirmish on June 28, 1864, a truce is called so the North can remove their dead and wounded. For two hours, Yankees and Rebels mingle, with some of the latter even assisting the former in their grisly work. Newspapers are exchanged. Northern coffee is swapped for Southern tobacco. Yanks crowd around two Rebel generals, soliciting and obtaining autographs.

As they part, a Confederate calls to a Yankee, "I hope to miss you, Yank, if I happen to shoot in your direction." "May I, never hit you Johnny if we fight again," comes the reply.

The reprieve is short. A couple of...

Presenting a significant new interpretation of Napoleonic warfare, Robert M. Epstein argues persuasively that the true origins of modern war can be found in the Franco-Austrian War of 1809.

Epstein contends that the 1809 war--with its massive and evenly matched armies, multiple theaters of operation, new command-and-control schemes, increased firepower, frequent stalemates, and large-scale slaughter--had more in common with the American Civil War and subsequent conflicts than with the decisive Napoleonic campaigns that preceded it.

Epstein examines 1809 in terms of the evolving new...

"If death must come--then far better for it to come when I'm shoulder to shoulder with these men who are fighting to preserve our country. . . . They are going to know that, in spite of being 'scared as hell' like the rest of them, a Catholic Priest is still going ahead and doing his work."

Father James P. Flynn could have been speaking for the rest of the chaplain corps, for he and his comrades shared fully in the lot of the common soldier: in Pacific island jungles, Europe's battered cities, North African deserts, and the oceans in between. And like the common soldier, chaplains endured...

Some men panic in the face of war, others embrace its horrific challenges. But none embraced war as ferociously or with as much cold calculation as William Tecumseh Sherman. It was Sherman who both articulated and practiced the relentless scorched-earth policy that broke the heart of the Confederacy. Sherman succeeded in large measure because, better than any other Union general, he fully grasped the essence of psychological warfare and could enact his own deep-rooted rage with ruthless clarity.

This biography is much broader than an analysis of Sherman's wartime genius, however. Michael...

This is the best biography of one of the most exciting, colorful, and controversial figures of the Civil War. A renowned cavalryman, Nathan Bedford Forrest perfected a ruthless hit-and-run guerrilla warfare that terrified Union soldiers and garnered the respect of warriors like William Sherman, who described his adversary as "that Devil, Forrest . . . the most remarkable man our Civil War produced on either side."

Historian Bruce Catton rated Forrest "one of the authentic military geniuses of the whole war," but Brian Steel Wills covers much more than the cavalryman's incredible feats on...

"An incomparable introduction not only to the cavalry but also to the old Army by one of its most distinguished veterans, who also happens to be a very talented writer."--Edward M. Coffman, author of The War to End All Wars

"No part of the American military past can exceed in romantic appeal the history of the Army's old horse cavalry. Truscott writes about the era both lovingly and eloquently."--Russell F. Weigley in the Washington Post Book World

"A personal view of a personal army. Truscott catches the spirit of the U.S. Cavalry, a spirit that survived the change of...