American Civil War

THE CLASSIC NATIONAL BESTSELLER ""A wonderful, splendid book—a book that should be read by every American, student or otherwise, who wants to understand his country, its true history, and its hope for the future."" –Howard Fast Historian Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United...

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER The author of The Splendid and the Vile brings to life the pivotal five months between the election of Abraham Lincoln and the start of the Civil War in this “riveting reexamination of a nation in tumult” (Los Angeles Times). “A feast of historical insight...

One of the most influential books of the past fifty years, Team of Rivals is Pulitzer Prize–winning author and esteemed presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin’s modern classic about the political genius of Abraham Lincoln, his unlikely presidency, and his cabinet of former political...

The #1 New York Times bestseller and New York Times Book Review 10 Best Books of 2017 “Eminently readable but thick with import . . . Grant hits like a Mack truck of knowledge.” —Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Atlantic Pulitzer Prize winner Ron Chernow returns with a sweeping and dramatic portrait...

"There are five square knots on the quilt every two inches apart. They escaped on the fifth knot on the tenth pattern and went to Ontario, Canada. The monkey wrench turns the wagon wheel toward Canada on a bear's paw trail to the crossroads--" And so begins the fascinating story that was passed...

The Civil War: A Narrative, Vol. 2 continues one of the most remarkable works of history ever fashioned. Focusing on the pivotal year of 1863....

Using previously unexamined documents, Edda L. Fields-Blackk brings to life the story of the Combahee River Raid, one of Harriet Tubman's most extraordinary accomplishments, based on original documents and written by a descendant of one of the participants.

A riveting historical narrative of the heart-stopping events surrounding the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, and the first work of history from mega-bestselling author Bill O'Reilly The iconic anchor of The O'Reilly Factor recounts one of the most dramatic stories in American history—how one...

An accessible and entertaining biography of our nation’s greatest public servant and original political maverick John Quincy Adams, from the bassist of the Grammy-nominated band the Avett Brothers. During the tumultuous period between the era of the Founding Fathers and the disunion of the...

Among the autobiographies of great military figures, Ulysses S. Grant’s is certainly one of the finest, and it is arguably the most notable literary achievement of any American president....

While the North prevailed in the Civil War, ending slavery and giving the country a "new birth of freedom," Heather Cox Richardson argues in this provocative work that democracy's blood-soaked victory was ephemeral....

In The Civil War: A Narrative, Vol. 3, Shelby Foote follows the events of the war from 1862 through 1864, discussing the strategies of both the North and the South....

The classic, “gripping” (New York Times) history demonstrating that America's economic supremacy was built on the backs of enslaved people Winner of the Avery O. Craven Prize from the Organization of American Historians Winner of the Sidney Hillman Prize “A stinging indictment of slavery...

Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the epic New York Times bestselling account of how Civil War general Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson became a great and tragic national hero. Stonewall Jackson has long been a figure of legend and romance. As much as any person in the...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Pulitzer Prize–winning biographer Jon Meacham chronicles the life of Abraham Lincoln, charting how—and why—he confronted secession, threats to democracy, and the tragedy of slavery to expand the possibilities of America. “Meacham has given us the Lincoln for...

The newest installment in the New York Times best-selling companion series to the Fox historical docudrama, Bill O'Reilly's Legends and Lies: The Civil War is a pulse-quickening account of the deadliest war in American history. From the birth of the Republican Party to the Confederacy's first...

Winner of the 2024 Pulitzer Prize in Biography “A rich narrative of the Crafts, an enslaved couple who escaped from Georgia in 1848, with light-skinned Ellen disguised as a disabled white gentleman and William as her manservant, exploiting assumptions about race, class, and disability to hide...

The Irish-American story, with all its twists and triumphs, is told through the improbable life of one man....

From the ""preeminent historian of Reconstruction"" (New York Times Book Review), the prize-winning classic work on the post-Civil War period that shaped modern America. Eric Foner's ""masterful treatment of one of the most complex periods of American history"" (New Republic) redefined how the...

From the author of The Ground Breaking, longlisted for the National Book Award, comes a riveting saga of the last year of the Civil War—and a revealing new account of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln Told with a page-turning pace, New York Times bestselling author and historian Scott...

Historian D. Scott Hartwig chronicles the single bloodiest day in American history, which resulted in 23,000 casualties.

In this New York Times bestseller, Stephen Ambrose brings to life the story of the building of the transcontinental railroad, from the men who financed it to the engineers and surveyors who risked their lives to the workers who signed on for the dangerous job. Nothing Like It in the World gives...

A masterful work by Pulitzer Prize–winning author David Herbert Donald, Lincoln is a stunning portrait of Abraham Lincoln’s life and presidency. Donald brilliantly depicts Lincoln’s gradual ascent from humble beginnings in rural Kentucky to the ever-expanding political circles in Illinois...

The greatest of all Civil War campaigns, Gettysburg was the turning point of the turning point in our nation’s history. Volumes have been written about this momentous three-day battle, but recent histories have tended to focus on the particulars rather than the big picture: on the generals or...

Forty years after his first book, David McCullough wrote and presented his speech, The Course of Human Events, in the 2003 Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities, in which he divulges his philosophy on writing, speaking, and history in his masterful storytelling style. In this Jefferson Lecture in...

An accessible and entertaining biography of our nation’s greatest public servant and original political maverick John Quincy Adams, from the bassist of the Grammy-nominated band the Avett Brothers. During the tumultuous period between the era of the Founding Fathers and the disunion of the...

It is newly estimated that 750,000 soldiers died in the American Civil War. But less well-known than the war’s death toll are the roughly 400,000 Union and Confederate troops who were captured and imprisoned. Many POWs died from starvation, dysentery, and exposure, and at the worst of the prison pens, more than 30,000 soldiers were caged in the equivalent of ten city blocks. Against the backdrop of a brutal internecine conflict, the Civil War’s prison camps were a harrowing milestone in the history of mass dehumanization.

In January 1863, in a remote Appalachian valley of North Carolina called Shelton Laurel, thirteen prisoners ranging in age from thirteen to fifty-nine were shot to death.

The rhyme and language of a writer's voice is the living soul of narrative. The evolution of John Hay's voice, established during his formative and college years at Brown University and echoed during his time with Abraham Lincoln, is documented in Lincoln's Speechwriter through evidence of Hay's distinct voice and Lincoln's ability to engage audiences, fused into something remarkable.

In the fall and winter of 1863, Union General Ambrose Burnside and Confederate General James Longstreet vied for control of the city of Knoxville and with it the railroad that linked the Confederacy east and west. The generals and their men competed, too, for the hearts and minds of the people of East Tennessee. Often overshadowed by the fighting at Chickamauga and Chattanooga, this important campaign has never received a full scholarly treatment. In this landmark book, award-winning historian Earl J. Hess fills a gap in Civil War scholarship.