This is a fresh and fascinating new look at one of the most pivotal moments in American history: the Battle of Gettysburg, when Union forces repelled the brilliant Robert E. Lee, who had already thrashed a long line of Federal opponents--just as he was poised at the back door of the nation's capital.

Conventional wisdom holds that Lee made one profoundly wrong decision on the last day of the battle--launching "Pickett's Charge" uphill across an open field against the heart of the Union defense. But why would he have employed only a fifth of his forces at such a crucial moment?

Now,...

The gripping story of six West Point graduates who fought each other in the Civil War.

With Civil War clouds darkening the horizon, they were strangers from different states thrown together as West Point cadets: George Armstrong Custer, Stephen Dodson Ramseur, Henry Algernon DuPont, John Pelham, Thomas Lafayette Rosser, and Wesley Merritt.

Right after their graduations, war erupted in 1861. They stayed blue or went gray, and even faced each other in battle. Acclaimed military historian Tom Carhart vividly brings to life these young men of valor and honor, and the valiant...

In the fall of 1965 West Point cadet Tom Carhart and five of his classmates from the U.S. Military Academy pulled off a feat of extraordinary ingenuity, precision, and raw guts: the theft of the billy goat mascot from their rival, the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, just before the biggest game of the year.