History, n. an account mostly false, of events mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers mostly knaves, and soldiers mostly fools. Marriage, n. The state or condition of a community consisting of a master, a mistress, and two slaves, making in all two. Self-Esteem, n. An erroneous appraisement.
These caustic aphorisms, collected in The Devil's Dictionary, helped earn Ambrose Bierce the epithets Bitter Bierce, the Devil's Lexicographer, and the Wickedest Man in San Francisco. First published as The Cynic's Word Book (1906) and later reissued under its preferred name in 1911,...

A lively and compelling portrait of one of the most acerbic and distinctive voices in American literature, Ambrose Bierce: Alone in Bad Company is a clear-eyed but sympathetic account of a complex individual at odds with his country, his family, his times, and himself.
The only American writer of any stature to fight in and survive the Civil War, Bierce discovered in the conflict a bitter confirmation of his darkest assumptions about man and his nature. Profoundly disillusioned, Bierce spent the next fifty years struggling to disabuse his fellow Americans of their own cherished...

For nearly three years, Walt Whitman immersed himself in the devastation of the Civil War, tending to thousands of wounded soldiers and recording his experiences with an immediacy and compassion unequaled in wartime literature anywhere in the world.
In The Better Angel, acclaimed biographer Roy Morris, Jr. gives us the fullest account of Whitman's profoundly transformative Civil War years and an historically invaluable examination of the Union's treatment of its sick and wounded. Whitman was mired in depression as the war began, subsisting on journalistic hackwork, his "great career" as a...

The bitter 1876 contest between Ohio Republican Governor Rutherford B. Hayes and New York Democratic Governor Samuel Tilden was the most sensational and corrupt presidential election in American history. It was also, in many ways, the final battle of the Civil War. Although Tilden received some 265,000 more popular votes than his opponent, and needed only one more electoral vote for victory, contested returns in three southern states still under Republican-controlled Reconstruction governments ultimately led to Hayes's being declared the winner after four tense months of brazen political...

In the very last paragraph of Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the title character gloomily reckons that it's time "to light out for the Territory ahead of the rest." Tom Sawyer's Aunt Sally is trying to "sivilize" him, and Huck Finn can't stand it--he's been there before.

It's a decision Huck's creator already had made, albeit for somewhat different reasons, a quarter of a century earlier. He wasn't even Mark Twain then, but as Huck might have said, "That ain't no matter." With the Civil War spreading across his native Missouri, twenty-five-year-old Samuel Clemens,...

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...

History, n. an account mostly false, of events mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers mostly knaves, and soldiers mostly fools. Marriage, n. The state or condition of a community consisting of a master, a mistress, and two slaves, making in all two. Self-Esteem, n. An erroneous appraisement.
These caustic aphorisms, collected in The Devil's Dictionary, helped earn Ambrose Bierce the epithets Bitter Bierce, the Devil's Lexicographer, and the Wickedest Man in San Francisco. First published as The Cynic's Word Book (1906) and later reissued under its preferred name in 1911,...

DAUGHTER OF THE JAGUAR is a love story that takes the reader down a precipitous path to more than one kind of treasure. When a Cessna bound for Oaxaca bearing Peter Stedman and colleagues from THE DENVER POST is forced to land at an ancient site in a remote region of the Southern Sierra Madres, they discover the mystic village of Las Minas. Here, Peter meets Leonor, a Mexican beauty regarded as a bruja or witch by locals, and one whom he comes to treasure even though many of their beliefs are opposed. They share an intense romance, including a remarkable discovery Leonor has made of the...

This is a collection of stories about the Morris family, our loved ones, friends and neighbors. It covers six decades of our efforts to survive, from growing up dirt poor to going out into the world seeking fame and fortune, then returning to our roots. We didn't find what we sought but we had adventures, misadventures and excitement galore. Lessons learned in childhood taught us to face each challenge with determination, perseverance, daring, a sense of humor and a will not only to survive but to succeed relying on ingenuity, skill, a strong work ethic, faith and luck.