English Civil War

Ulysses Grant rose from obscurity to discover he had a genius for battle, and he propelled the Union to victory in the Civil War. After Abraham Lincoln's assassination and the disastrous brief presidency of Andrew Johnson, America turned to Grant again to unite the country, this time as president. In Brands' sweeping, majestic full biography, Grant emerges as a heroic figure who was fearlessly on the side of right.

March 1865: The United States was at a crossroads, and, truth be told, Abraham Lincoln was a sick man. "I am very unwell," he confided to a close acquaintance. A vast and terrible civil war was winding down, leaving momentous questions for a war-weary president to address. A timely invitation from General Ulysses S. Grant provided the impetus for an escape to City Point, Virginia, a journey from which Abraham Lincoln drew much more than he ever expected.

Should we still read William Faulkner in this new century? What can his works tell us about the legacy of slavery and the Civil War, that central quarrel in our nation's history? These are the provocative questions that Michael Gorra asks in this historic portrait of the novelist and his world.

Contained here is Julius Caesar's account of his activities following the Gallic Wars, in three books that detail his retaliation to a political conspiracy in Rome, leading to conflicts against his own countrymen and rival general Pompey. It is uniquely presented in Caesar's first-person perspective (the original Latin is in the third-person perspective). This production is based on a translation of the work by W.A. McDevitte and W.S. Bohn published in New York in 1869.

What causes people to forsake their country and take arms against it? What prompts their neighbors, hardly distinguishable in station or success, to defend that country against the rebels?  That is the question H. W. Brands answers in his powerful new history of the American Revolution.

The audiobook covers the first stages of the war, from 1927-1937, the interlude from 1938-1945 during the Second Sino-Japanese War and World War II, and the final and most well-known phase of the war from 1946-1949. Learn about the causes, events, and lasting effects of the Chinese Civil War and about the warfare tactics and political strategy of the Chinese Communist Party and the Nationalist Kuomintang during these integral years. This is the story about how a group of young, inexperienced Chinese revolutionaries changed the destiny of China.

All for the Union is the astonishing and eloquent diary of Elisha Hunt Rhodes, the Union soldier featured in Ken Burns' highly acclaimed PBS television documentary The Civil War. Enlisting as a private in the 2nd Rhode Island Infantry, Rhodes fought in every major campaign waged by the Army of the Potomac, from Bull Run to Appomattox. Here, in his own powerfully moving words, Rhodes reveals why he was willing to die to preserve his beloved Union.

Kim Wickens, a lawyer and dressage rider, became fascinated by this legendary horse when she learned that twelve of Thoroughbred racing's thirteen Triple Crown winners descended from Lexington. Wickens spent years meticulously researching the horse and his legacy—and with Lexington, she presents an absorbing, exciting account that transports listeners back to the raucous beginning of American horse racing and introduces them to the stallion at its heart.

Do you know the bloody story of the Spanish Civil War and what we need to learn from it to understand today’s world? The Spanish Civil War is more relevant than ever, yet it is not that well known. However, the lessons that we can learn from the war can help us today in our divided world. The Spanish Civil War is seen as a dress rehearsal for WWII. However, few understand its origins, causes, and main battles.

More than 150 years after the end of the Civil War, scores of websites, articles, and organizations repeat claims that anywhere between 500 and 100,000 free and enslaved African Americans fought willingly as soldiers in the Confederate army. But as Kevin M. Levin argues in this carefully researched book, such claims would have shocked anyone who served in the army during the war itself. Levin explains that imprecise contemporary accounts, poorly understood primary-source material, and other misrepresentations helped fuel the rise of the black Confederate myth.

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.

The Spanish Civil War was much more than just an overture to World War II. It was a war born out of schisms in Spanish society between rich and poor, monarchists and Republicans, the right and the left, and between those who supported the church and those who saw it as an instrument of oppression. For all its brutality and horror, the Spanish Civil War was a conflict between ideals often fought by volunteers on each side who truly believed that they were helping to build a better world.

In many ways, the story of Camp Douglas outside of Chicago is the story of the Civil War itself. The camp got its start as a brand new facility filled with men ready to fight a war that most on both sides believed would last only a few months. However, as the war went on, the facilities were overwhelmed by the sheer scale of the damage and the massive numbers of people involved.

Phillips charts the way forward for progressives and people of color after four years of Trump, arguing that Democrats must recognize the nature of the fight we're in, which is a contest between democracy and white supremacy left unresolved after the Civil War. We will not overcome, Phillips writes, until we govern as though we are under attack—until we finally recognize that the time has come to finish the conquest of the Confederacy and all that it represents.

In The Field of Blood, Joanne B. Freeman recovers the long-lost story of physical violence on the floor of the US Congress. Drawing on an extraordinary range of sources, she shows that the Capitol was rife with conflict in the decades before the Civil War. Legislative sessions were often punctuated by mortal threats, canings, flipped desks, and all-out slugfests. When debate broke down, congressmen drew pistols and waved Bowie knives. One representative even killed another in a duel. Many were beaten and bullied in an attempt to intimidate them into compliance, particularly on the issue of slavery.

The Partition of Ireland and the Troubles: The History of Northern Ireland from the Irish Civil War to the Good Friday Agreement analyzes the tumultuous events that marked the creation of Northern Ireland, and the conflicts fueled by the partition. Along with pictures of important people, places, and events, you will learn about Northern Ireland like never before.

The Irish War of Independence, which ended in July 1921, led directly to the agreement of the Anglo-Irish Treaty, an agreement that provided Ireland with a measure of independence. The Irish Free State was created, and Ireland was granted a level of autonomy it had not enjoyed for more than 100 years. However, the treaty contained a clause that was to divide Ireland, literally and politically.

In A Hell of a Storm, Brown brings history to life in a way that resonates with the events of present. Through chapters on Lincoln, Emerson, Stowe, Thoreau, and Tubman, along with a cast of presidents, poets, abolitionists, and black emigrationists, Brown weaves a political, cultural, and literary history that chronicles the Republican party’s creation and rise, the collapse of antebellum compromises, and the coming of the Civil War, all topics that mirror current discussions about polarization in our nation today.

A historical thriller perfect for fans of Ruta Sepetys and Elizabeth Wein, about two girls from separate worlds flee across the Russian countryside at the height of the Russian Civil War.

A sweeping narrative that remakes our understanding of perhaps the most consequential period in American history, The Rise and Fall of the Second American Republic shows how the great contest of that age is also the great contest of our age—and serves as a necessary reminder of how young and fragile our democracy truly is.