Last of the Blue and Gray

Old Men, Stolen Glory, and the Mystery That Outlived the Civil War

By: Richard A. Serrano

Narrated by: Dan John Miller

In the late 1950s, as America prepared for the Civil War centennial, two very old men lay dying. Albert Woolson, 109 years old, slipped in and out of a coma at a Duluth, Minnesota, hospital, his memories as a Yankee drummer boy slowly dimming. Walter Williams, at 117, blind and deaf and bedridden in his daughter's home in Houston, Texas, no longer could tell of his time as a Confederate forage master. The last of the Blue and the Gray were drifting away; an era was ending. Unknown to the public, centennial officials, and the White House too, one of these men was indeed a veteran of that horrible conflict and one, according to the best evidence, nothing but a fraud. One was a soldier. The other had been living a great, big lie.

©2013 Richard A. Serrano (P)2013 Tantor

Critic reviews

"Told with clarity and skillfully paced, Serrano's story of two old men and the mythology that grew up around them is intimate, expansive, and thoroughly entertaining." ( Publishers Weekly)

Stories would be soon be lost come to life.

Too often the important but often humble stories of our American history are lost simply for the fact of someone caring enough to want to know. Serranos the type of writer who never gets enough of those stories and his need to share them with the world is to our benefit.