English Civil War

As a conductor for the Underground Railroad - the covert resistance network created to aid and protect slaves seeking freedom - William Still helped as many as 800 people escape enslavement. He also meticulously collected the letters, biographical sketches, arrival memos, and ransom notes of the escapees. The Underground Railroad Records is an archive of primary documents that trace the narrative arc of the greatest, most successful campaign of civil disobedience in American history.

For the past half century, John Keegan, the greatest military historian of our time, has been returning to the scenes of America’s most bloody and wrenching war to ponder its lingering conundrums: the continuation of fighting for four years between such vastly mismatched sides; the dogged persistence of ill-trained, ill-equipped, and often malnourished combatants; the effective absence of decisive battles among some two to three hundred known to us by name.

There is perhaps no more compelling example of the power of words than Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. In merely 272 words, Lincoln gave the nation "a new birth of freedom" by tracing its history to the Declaration of Independence, as well as incorporating elements of the Greek revival and Transcendentalism. Garry Wills breathes news life into words we thought we knew and reveals much about a President so easily mythologized but often misunderstood.

The US Civil War was a war that changed the face, body, and heart of the United States forever. Secrets of the US Civil War reveals little-known stories of the people, weapons, and battles that have affected the maps on our walls and the allegiances in our hearts.

We view the long, horrifying struggle from the vantage of the White House as Lincoln copes with incompetent generals, hostile congressmen, and his raucous cabinet. He overcomes these obstacles by winning the respect of his former competitors, and in the case of Seward, finds a loyal and crucial friend to see him through. This brilliant multiple biography is centered on Lincoln's mastery of men and how it shaped the most significant presidency in the nation's history.

Move over, Scarlett O'Hara! It's New England, 1861, and the troubles in the southern states seem a long way off for Jack Edgerton, the spoiled son of a prominent Vermont family. Howver, when he meets and falls in love with Aaron Johnson, the sexy son of a slave on the run from Virginia, Edgerton's world is turned upside down.

Amid the shadows of war, one family faces an impossible choice that will change their lives forever. From best seller Mario Escobar comes a 20th-century historical novel of sacrifice and resilience inspired by Spain’s famed Children of Morelia and the true events that shaped their lives.

Americans tend to cast slavery as a pre-modern institution - the nation's original sin, perhaps, but isolated in time and divorced from America's later success. But to do so robs the millions who suffered in bondage of their full legacy. As historian Edward E. Baptist reveals in The Half Has Never Been Told, the expansion of slavery in the first eight decades after American independence drove the evolution and modernization of the United States.

Few historical figures are as intriguing as John Brown, the controversial Abolitionist who used terrorist tactics against slavery and single-handedly changed the course of American history. This brilliant biography of Brown (1800-1859) by the prize-winning critic and cultural biographer David S. Reynolds brings to life the Puritan warrior who gripped slavery by the throat and triggered the Civil War. When does principled resistance become anarchic brutality? How can a murderer be viewed as a heroic freedom fighter? The case of John Brown opens windows on these timely issues.

Actor Mahershala Ali performs the gripping tale of an armed band of Confederate deserters and slaves living in a mixed-race community who rose up against the Confederate Cavalry in 1863 to form their own republic, free of slavery, in what is now the state of Mississippi. The community they formed - and the ambiguous racial identity of their descendants - confounded the rules of the segregated South well into the 20th century.

They were women whose lives began in slavery, who weathered the Civil War, and who grappled with the contradictions of emancipation through the turbulent early years of the 20th century. Through it all, they fought to unite their family and forge success on their own terms.

Robert E. Lee scholar H. W. Crocker III is an esteemed Civil War historian. Skillfully summarizing Lee’s life, Crocker clearly extracts leadership lessons from the storied career of the South’s beloved leader and applies them to today’s business worldUnder General Lee’s management, a rag-tag army of poor farmers—vastly outnumbered, outgunned, under-supplied, and under-fed—consistently routed Union troops. Brilliantly seizing strategic opportunities, Lee stunned his foes and inspired his soldiers. He was decisive, focused, and humble.

Since 2002, Mohamedou Slahi has been imprisoned at the detention camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. In all these years, the United States has never charged him with a crime. A federal judge ordered his release in March 2010, but the U.S. government fought that decision, and there is no sign that the United States plans to let him go.

Do you have what it takes to run off and join the army, leaving your family behind? That’s what John Lincoln Clem, a nine-year-old boy living in Ohio, does as the American Civil War rages on. In 1861, Johnny sneaks onto a train filled with men from the 3rd Ohio Union Regiment, determined to fight for his country. Taken in by the older soldiers, Johnny becomes a drummer boy—not to mention the youngest person to serve in the war. Living a soldier’s life, Johnny experiences the brutalities of battle and the hunger and illness in between.

"We were as brothers," William Tecumseh Sherman said, describing his relationship with Ulysses S. Grant. They were incontestably two of the most important figures in the Civil War, but until now there has been no book about their victorious partnership and the deep friendship that made it possible.

Darius vaporized the Cygnian home world to end the war before it began. It didn’t work. Little does he know, he's been played for a sucker from the start. Terrible as the Cygnians are, there is a more ruthless enemy manipulating the Union to tear itself apart in a bloody war between the Revenants and the Cygnians. Darius is surging up the ranks in the Revenant fleet, winning victory after victory, but they're all hollow with his daughter, Cassandra, frozen in cryo and no way to safely wake her.

Fitzhugh Lee was a Confederate cavalry general during the Civil War. He was the nephew of Robert E. Lee, and the author of the most famous biography of his uncle.

It was the most remarkable political about-face in American history. During the Civil War, General James Longstreet fought tenaciously for the Confederacy. He was alongside Lee at Gettysburg (and counseled him not to order the ill-fated attacks on entrenched Union forces there). He won a major Confederate victory at Chickamauga and was seriously wounded during a later battle.

As white supremacy, ultra-nationalism, rabid misogyny, and anti-immigrant fervor coalesce, a new and uniquely American form of fascism looms. Could our current moment actually bring about the end of democracy in the United States? Are Americans willing to surrender their freedom and dignity, along with their ongoing struggle for equality, justice, and mutual respect in the face of the rising tide of political and ideological extremism?

From drone warfare in the Middle East to digital spying by the National Security Agency, the US government has harnessed the power of cutting-edge technology to awesome effect. But what happens when ordinary people have the same tools at their fingertips? Advances in cybertechnology, biotechnology, and robotics mean that more people than ever before have access to potentially dangerous technologies that could be used to attack states and private citizens alike.