Showing titles in American Civil War

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER The New York Times bestselling author of George Washington's Secret Six and Thomas Jefferson and the Tripoli Pirates turns to two other heroes of the nation: Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass. In The President and the Freedom Fighter, Brian Kilmeade tells the...

In a lawless land, one man begins forging his future with a gun. Nate Carlton wants peace and to take up the life he left behind. Instead, returning home to South Carolina from the Civil war, he finds under the Reconstruction, death and destruction of all that he held dear. Homeless and cast adrift, he saves a stranger’s life from an Indian attack, an act that will change his life forever. In a lawless and Wild West, having lost everything, he must make his way with the only tool he has-a gun. But will he learn and master the deadly skill before he is killed by Carpetbaggers and outlaws? ...

This major addition to the history of the Civil War is a “fast-paced, fact-rich account” (The Wall Street Journal) offering a detailed look at President Abraham Lincoln’s use of clandestine services, military intelligence, and the secret battles waged by Union spies and agents to save the...

From the bestselling author of The Indispensables, the unknown and dramatic story of irregular guerrilla warfare that altered the course of the Civil War and inspired the origins of America’s modern special operations forces. The Civil War is most remembered for the grand battles that have...

the most spectacular conflicts between Grant and Lee and details the end of hope for the Confederacy. Utilizing various collections of unpublished letters written by soldiers, personal diaries of spouses and relatives, memoirs of soldiers and their families, and official war records, Catton follows Grant's campaigns from early 1864 to the end of the war, detailing many crucial battles along the way.

The true operatic tragedy of Maximilian and Carlota, the European aristocrats who stumbled into power in Mexico—and faced bloody consequences. In the 1860s, Napoleon III, intent on curbing the rise of American imperialism, persuaded a young Austrian archduke and a Belgian princess to leave...

Pulitzer Prize winner Larry McMurtry crafts works synonymous with the grandeur and beauty of the American West. Here McMurtry turns his attention to George A. Custer, a complex man who has captivated historians for over a century. From graduating last in his class at West Point to leading the ill-fated 7th Cavalry in the attack at Little Bighorn, Custer forged a legacy - still very much alive today - as one of the West's most enduring historical figures.

General Sherman's 1864 burning of Atlanta solidified his legacy as a ruthless leader. Yet Sherman proved far more complex than his legendary military tactics reveal. James Lee McDonough offers fresh insight into a man tormented by the fear that history would pass him by, who was plagued by personal debts, and who lived much of his life separated from his family.

In the Shenandoah Valley campaign of 1864, US Major General Philip H. Sheridan led his army to a series of decisive victories for the Union over Lieutenant General Jubal A. Early and the Confederate Army of the Valley. In From Winchester to Cedar Creek, author Jeffry D. Wert highlights Sheridan's victories in the critical area of the Virginia valley as defining moments of the Civil War. Sheridan's campaign ensured Confederate defeat in Virginia and ultimately contributed to Lincoln's reelection and the Union's victory in the Civil War.

Margaret Leech’s Pulitzer Prize-winning history paints a wonderfully vivid and lively picture of Washington, DC, during the Civil War. In addition to the major events and figures such as Lincoln, Leech uses telling anecdotes and draws upon cameo players such as Louisa May Alcott, Walt Whitman, Andrew Carnegie, and a Confederate lady spy to create a living portrait of a sleepy, unfinished city as it struggles to become the strong capital of a united nation.

Was the Confederacy doomed from the start in its struggle against the superior might of the Union? Did its forces fight heroically against all odds for the cause of states’ rights? In reality, these suggestions are an elaborate and intentional effort on the part of Southerners to rationalize the secession and the war itself. Unfortunately, skillful propagandists have been so successful in promoting this romanticized view that the Lost Cause has assumed a life of its own.

WINNER OF THE 2026 GILDER LEHRMAN LINCOLN PRIZE The first major account of the American Civil War to give full weight to the central role played by religion, reframing the conflict through Abraham Lincoln’s contentious appeals to faith-based nationalism How did slavery figure in God’s...

Race and Reunion is a history of how the unity of white America was purchased through the increasing segregation of black and white memory of the Civil War. Blight delves deeply into the shifting meanings of death and sacrifice, Reconstruction, the romanticized South of literature, soldiers' reminiscences of battle, the idea of the Lost Cause, and the ritual of Memorial Day. He resurrects the variety of African-American voices and memories of the war and the efforts to preserve the emancipationist legacy in the midst of a culture built on its denial.

An instant New York Times bestseller A nuanced exploration of Abraham Lincoln’s political acumen, illuminating a great politician’s strategy in a country divided—and lessons for our own disorderly present In 1855, with the United States at odds over slavery, the lawyer Abraham Lincoln...

James Longstreet's countermarch and Samuel Johnston's morning reconnaissance are two of the most enigmatic events of the Battle of Gettysburg. Both have been viewed as major factors in the Confederacy's loss of the battle and, in turn, the war. Yet much of it lies shrouded in mystery. Recognizing the multitude of factors that affect human memory, In the Shadow of the Round Tops explores how the individual soldiers experienced, remembered, and wrote about the battle, and how those memories have created a cloud over James Longstreet's countermarch and Samuel Johnston's reconnaissance.

A biography of William T. Sherman by the military theorist and author of Scipio Africanus: Greater Than Napoleon.

A quiet, wealthy plantation owner, Jack Hinson watched the start of the Civil War with disinterest. Opposed to secession and a friend to Union and Confederate commanders alike, he did not want a war. After Union soldiers seized and murdered his sons, placing their decapitated heads on the gateposts of his estate, Hinson could remain indifferent no longer. He commissioned a special rifle for long-range accuracy, he took to the woods, and he set out for revenge.

Everyone knows the story of Abraham Lincoln's assassination in 1865, but few are aware of the original conspiracy to kill him four years earlier in 1861, literally on his way to Washington, DC, for his first inauguration. The conspirators were part of a pro-Southern secret society that didn't want an antislavery President in the White House. They planned an elaborate scheme to assassinate the brand new President in Baltimore as Lincoln's inauguration train passed through en route to the Capitol.

William Tecumseh Sherman was an American soldier, businessman, educator, and author. He served as a general in the Union Army during the American Civil War, for which he received recognition for his outstanding command of military strategy as well as criticism for the harshness of the scorched earth policies he implemented in conducting total war against the Confederate States.

A profound new rendering of the struggle by African-Americans for equality after the Civil War and the violent counter-revolution that resubjugated them, as seen through the prism of the war of images and ideas that have left an enduring racist stain on the American mind. The abolition of...