English Civil War

The murder of Abraham Lincoln set off the greatest manhunt in American history, the pursuit and capture of John Wilkes Booth. From April 14 to April 26, 1865, the assassin led Union cavalry and detectives on a wild 12-day chase through the streets of Washington, D.C., across the swamps of Maryland, and into the forests of Virginia, while the nation, still reeling from the just-ended Civil War, watched in horror and sadness.

Two mighty armies blunder toward each other, one led by confident, beloved Robert E. Lee and the other by dour George Meade. They’ll meet in a Pennsylvania crossroads town where no one planned to fight. In this sweeping, savagely realistic novel, the greatest battle ever fought on American soil explodes into life at Gettysburg. As generals squabble, staffs err. Tragedy unfolds for immigrants in blue and barefoot Rebels alike. The fate of the nation will be decided in a few square miles of fields. There are no marble statues here, only men of flesh and blood, imperfect and courageous.

Abraham Lincoln is the central axis of this story about America's seemingly unstoppable march toward war, the shattering of its political landscape, and its grappling with the moral underpinnings of a republic of the people, by the people, and for the people.

Thomas E. Ricks offers an utterly new perspective on America’s greatest moral revolution—the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s—and its legacy today. While the Movement has become synonymous with Martin Luther King Jr.’s ethos of nonviolence, Ricks draws on his deep knowledge of tactics and strategy to advance a surprising but revelatory idea: the greatest victories for Black Americans of the past century were won not by idealism alone, but through recruiting, training, discipline, and organization—the hallmarks of any successful military campaign.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it.

In all of Roman history there was never a more turbulent year than A.D. 69, the ill-omened "Year of the Three Emperors". By some miracle, the greatest historian of the age, Tacitus, was able to chronicle those momentous events in a work he called The History. In its pages are some of the most memorable events of Roman history described in some of the most intensely passionate prose ever devised.

LA Times Book Award winner and expert on the past and present Japan, Ian Buruma examines the transformation of a country. Following Japan's history from its opening to the West in 1853 to its hosting of the 1964 Olympics, Buruma focuses on how figures such as Commodore Matthew Perry, Douglas MacArthur, and Emperor Mitsushito helped shape this complex country.

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.

In the Pulitzer prize–winning classic The Killer Angels, Michael Shaara created the finest Civil War novel of our time. In the bestselling Gods and Generals, Shaara’s son, Jeff, brilliantly sustained his father’s vision, telling the epic story of the events culminating in the Battle of Gettysburg. Now, Jeff Shaara brings this legendary father-son trilogy to its stunning conclusion in a novel that brings to life the final two years of the Civil War.

It is July 10, 1863, and Baltimore is in the hands of the Army of Northern Virginia under the command of Robert E. Lee. Shattered remnants of the Army of the Potomac have fallen back into Washington, digging in, preparing to make a desperate stand. Six days earlier, General Ulysses S. Grant and his army of 60,000 had taken Vicksburg. The last telegram out of Washington before the rebels cut the line changed all that.

In July 1883, just a few days after the 20th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg, a group of editors at the Century magazine engaged in a lively argument: Which Civil War battle was the bloodiest battle of them all? One claimed it was Chickamauga, another Cold Harbor. The argument inspired a brainstorm: Why not let the magazine’s 125,000 readers in on the conversation by offering “a series of papers on some of the great battles of the war, to be written by officers in command on both sides.”

The incidents of the book are real ones, drawn in part from the writer's personal experiences and observations as a soldier of the Union during that war. He is also indebted to many comrades for reminiscences of battle and prison life. The perilous escape of Jed and Dick, from Andersonville down the Flint and Apalachicola Rivers, to the Gulf of Mexico, is in substance the narrative of a comrade whom the writer knew at Andersonville, and afterwards met when the war had closed. The descriptions of the prison are especially truthful, for in them the author briefly tells what he saw.

No other war in the history of the US has sparked as much debate and conflict as the American Civil War. For more than 150 years, the story of the Civil War has been a source of contention, confusion, and even contempt in American life. Explore the deadliest war in American history!

During the Civil War, Americans confronted profound moral problems about how to fight in the conflict. In this innovative book, D. H. Dilbeck reveals how the Union sought to wage a just war against the Confederacy. He shows that Northerners fought according to a distinct "moral vision of war", an array of ideas about the nature of a truly just and humane military effort.

Civil War Battles is an informative introduction to the subject. For four straight years, the people of the United States fought against one another in a brutal civil war that resulted in the deaths of approximately 620,000 men in uniform. Between 1861 and 1865, more Americans died during this bloody conflict than in all other American wars combined. With fighting across the South and in Maryland, Pennsylvania, Missouri, and Kentucky, some battles proved to be key in the overall outcome of the war.

Entrenched in a conflict over slave labor, the industrialized North and slave-powered South of the mid-1800s became entangled in the only war to be waged between Americans on U.S. soil. The Civil War, infamously known as the bloodiest military conflict to date, engaged three million Americans, claiming the lives of over half a million.

Civil War Leaders is an informative introduction to the lives of several of the war's key players. Though historians could name hundreds of political and military leaders who left their mark during the Civil War, this book presents the lives and contributions made by the era's greatest leaders, representatives of both sides in the conflict, Northerners and Southerners alike. While their efforts may, at times, have pitted one against the other, their legacies represent a patchwork of American biographies.

Charlie Bristol comes to Seattle to set up a traveling Valentine's Day exhibit. The director of the museum surprises her with a package of Civil War valentines from an anonymous donor. She is touched by the heartfelt messages. Does such powerful love still exist? During a nap she dreams she's alive during the Civil War and meets Elliot Lowery, the author of the valentines, who mistakes her for his fiancée, Charlotte. She and Elliot negotiate the murky waters of wartime romance.

The War Between the States is synonymous with romance, tragedy, bravery, and lost causes. The terrible war nearly tore the nation apart. The United States survived, though at a terrible cost. Today, more than 150 years after the end of the Civil War, people are still fascinated by this pivotal point in history. Writers, too, find this a fruitful period to investigate. In Civil War Fantastic, some of science fiction’s finest writers take us back to this turbulent time with their own special visions of what might have been.

April 1865 could have destroyed the nation. Instead it saved it. As April begins, the battered Confederate capital of Richmond falls to the Union Army. Robert E. Lee surrenders his forces to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox one week later. In good spirits and sensing the war's end, President Abraham Lincoln attends a comedic play - and is assassinated. Simultaneously, Secretary of State William Seward is brutally attacked but survives.