Catalog Search Results
Author
Summary
Celebrated for his vivid depictions of the nineteenth-century American Midwest, Carl Sandburg brings unique insight to the life of Abraham Lincoln in this distinguished biography. He captures both the man who grew up on the Indiana prairie and the president who held the country together through the turbulence and tragedy of the Civil War.
Based on a lifetime of research, Sandburg's biography was originally published as a monumental, six-volume study....
Author
Series
Summary
The renowned historian's classic study of the Texas Ranger Division, presented with its original illustrations and a foreword by Lyndon B. Johnson.
“Texas Rangers” tells the story of this unique law enforcement agency from its origin in 1823, when it was formed by "Father of Texas" Stephen F. Austin, to the 1930s, when legendary lawman Frank Hamer tracked down the infamous outlaws Bonnie and Clyde. Both colorful and authoritative, it presents...
Author
Series
Summary
"Highly informative and entertaining…propels the reader light years beyond dull textbooks and Gone with the Wind."-San Francisco Chronicle. It has been 150 years since the opening salvo of America's War Between the States. New York Times bestselling author Ken Davis tells us everything we never knew about our nation's bloodiest conflict in Don't Know Much About ® the Civil War-another fascinating and fun installment in his acclaimed series.
Author
Summary
From the award-winning, national bestselling author of Gettysburg, this is the definitive account of the Chancellorsville campaign, from the moment "Fighting Joe" Hooker took command of the Army of the Potomac to the Union's stinging, albeit temporary, defeat. Along with a vivid description of the experiences of the troops. Most notable is his use of Union military intelligence reports to show how Gen. Joseph Hooker was fed a stream of accurate information...
Author
Series
Formats
Summary
Love history? Know your stuff with History in an Hour. The American Civil War started when eleven southern 'slave' states declared their independence from the United States of America. Abraham Lincoln's Republican government were strongly against slavery and fought to abolish it and keep the country united. The American Civil War: History in an Hour gives a concise and authoritative overview of these four years of bloody and devastating warfare to...
Author
Series
Summary
"The Confederate Nation has yet to be superseded as the standard title on the subject. " -Journal of Southern History, 2007
"Incisive and insightful…. As good a short history of the Southern war effort was we have." -T. Harry Williams, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Lincoln and His Generals
Emory M. Thomas's critically acclaimed chronicle of the Confederacy remains widely recognized as the standard history of the South during the Civil War....
Author
Summary
Grinding, bloody, and ultimately decisive, the Petersburg Campaign was the Civil War's longest and among its most complex. Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee squared off for more than nine months in their struggle for Petersburg, the key to the Confederate capital at Richmond. Featuring some of the war's most notorious battles, the campaign played out against a backdrop of political drama and crucial fighting elsewhere, with massive costs for soldiers...
Author
Summary
The first one-volume survey of the American Revolution that is both objective and comprehensive, this outstanding narrative history traces the growth of a conflict that inexorably set the American colonies on the road to independence. Offering a spirited chronicle of the war itself -- the campaigns and strategies, the leaders on both sides, the problems of fielding and sustaining an army, and of maintaining morale -- Stokesbury also brings the reader...
Author
Series
Summary
Michael Ballard provides a concise yet thorough study of the 1863 battle that cut off a crucial river port and rail depot for the South and split the Confederate nation, providing a turning point in the Civil War. The Union victory at Vicksburg was hailed with as much celebration in the North as the Gettysburg victory and Ballard makes a convincing case that it was equally important to the ultimate resolution of the conflict.
Author
Series
Summary
The 1862 battle of Pea Ridge in northwestern Arkansas was one of the largest Civil War engagements fought on the western frontier, and it dramatically altered the balance of power in the Trans-Mississippi. This study of the battle is based on research in archives from Connecticut to California and includes a pioneering study of the terrain of the sprawling battlefield, as well as an examination of soldiers' personal experiences, the use of Native...
Author
Summary
"On October 8, 1862, Union and Confederate forces clashed near Perryville, Kentucky, in what would be the largest battle ever fought on Kentucky soil. The climax of a campaign that began two months before in northern Mississippi, Perryville came to be recognized as the high water mark of the western Confederacy.
Some said the hard-fought battle, forever remembered by participants for its sheer savagery and for their commanders' confusion, was the...
12) The Most Hated Man in Kentucky: The Lost Cause and the Legacy of Union General Stephen Burbridge
Author
Summary
"For the last third of the nineteenth century, Union General Stephen Gano Burbridge enjoyed the unenviable distinction of being the most hated man in Kentucky. From mid-1864, just months into his reign as the military commander of the state, until his death in December 1894, the mere mention of his name triggered a firestorm of curses from editorialists and politicians. By the end of Burbridge's tenure, Governor Thomas E. Bramlette concluded that...
Author
Summary
Everyone knows about Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain and his 20th Maine Regiment, but there's much more to the story of Maine at the Battle of Gettysburg. Soldiers from Maine made their presence felt all over the battlefield during three days of fighting in July 1863. There's Oliver Otis Howard, corps commander who helped secure high ground for the Union on the first day. There's Adelbert Ames, who drilled the 20th Maine-including Chamberlain himself-into...
Author
Series
Summary
The last word on the flags of the lost cause. The Wall Street Journal
A comprehensive discussion of the flags that represented the southern nation between 1861 and 1865, The Flags of the Confederacy offers a detailed and well-researched look at the history of the national, state, and misunderstood.
In the decades which have followed the fall of the Confederate States of America, much information on the flags of the member states has been lost, and...
Author
Summary
Over 80 letters from Corporal John Pardington to his wife paint a vivid portrait of the life and everyday concerns of a Union soldier and his transformation from simple Michigan country boy to seasoned fighter. His touching love letters are made even more poignant because the reader is aware of the young soldier's impending death at the Battle of Gettysburg.
Author
Series
Summary
• More than 150 firsthand accounts of the American Civil War, many of them long forgotten and previously unpublished • Includes accounts from Lee, Longstreet, Pickett, Meade, and Hancock • Maps pinpoint each writer's location on the battlefield At Gettysburg on July 3, 1863, Confederate soldiers launched one of history's most famous infantry assaults: Pickett's Charge. Using the participants' own words, Richard Rollins deftly reconstructs that...
Author
Series
Summary
In the first comprehensive study of the experience of Virginia soldiers and their families in the Civil War, Aaron Sheehan-Dean captures the inner world of the rank-and-file. Utilizing new statistical evidence and first-person narratives, Sheehan-Dean explores how Virginia soldiers--even those who were nonslaveholders--adapted their vision of the war's purpose to remain committed Confederates. Sheehan-Dean challenges earlier arguments that middle-...
Author
Summary
George Armstrong Custer is famous for his fatal defeat at the Little Bighorn in 1876, but Custer's baptism of fire came during the Civil War. After graduating last in the West Point class of 1861, Custer served from the First Battle of Bull Run (only a month after graduation) through Appomattox, where he witnessed the surrender. But Custer's true rise to prominence began at Gettysburg in 1863. On the eve of the Battle of Gettysburg, only twenty-three...
Author
Summary
For a generation, scholarship on the Reconstruction era has rightly focused on the struggles of the recently emancipated for a meaningful freedom and defined its success or failure largely in those terms. In The Ordeal of the Reunion, Mark Wahlgren Summers goes beyond this vitally important question, focusing on Reconstruction's need to form an enduring Union without sacrificing the framework of federalism and republican democracy. Assessing the era...
Author
Summary
"[A] thorough and comprehensive study of this tragic, almost forgotten episode of American history." -History
"What Sherman did in Georgia and Sheridan in the Valley pales in comparison. This study truly shows the horrible cost inherent in any civil war." -Civil War Courier
"[A] well written and compelling account of an aspect of the Civil War which has not received sufficient attention." -Southern Historian
"Compelling . . ." -Publishers Weekly
"[A]...