United States War History

Warpath and Bivouac, or the Conquest of the Sioux offers a picture of campaigning in the 1870s and records the sights and sounds of plains warfare. This campaign was the one in which General Custer suffered his famous defeat at the Little Big Horn. Finerty gives an account of the Battle of the Rosebud which preceded the Custer massacre, and also reports on the later 1879 campaign to force the surrender of Sitting Bull and his Sioux who were the last resistance after Custer's defeat.

Ben Franklin is the most lovable of America's founding fathers. His wit, his charm, his inventiveness - even his grandfatherly appearance - are legendary. But this image obscures the scandals that dogged him throughout his life. In The Loyal Son, award-winning historian Daniel Mark Epstein throws the spotlight on one of the more enigmatic aspects of Franklin's biography: his complex and confounding relationship with his illegitimate son, William.

La torre elevada narra la increíble historia de varios hombres cuyos destinos se entrecruzan y confluyen de forma dramática el 11 de septiembre de 2001. Con una precisión poco común, sustentada en más de quinientas entrevistas realizadas a lo largo de cinco años, nos describe el auge del fundamentalismo islámico, la creación de al-Qaeda y los errores cometidos por los confiados servicios de inteligencia que culminaron en el atentado de las Torres Gemelas.

Called "the preeminent survey of American military history" by Russell F. Weigley, America's foremost military historian, For the Common Defense is an essential contribution to the field of military history. This third edition provides the most complete and current history of United States defense policy and military institutions and the conduct of America's wars. Without diminishing the value of its earlier editions, authors Allan R. Millett, Peter Maslowski, and William B. Feis provide a fresh perspective on the continuing issues that characterize national security policy.

On October 8, 1862, Union and Confederate forces clashed near Perryville, Kentucky, in what would be the largest battle ever fought on Kentucky soil. The climax of a campaign that began two months before in Northern Mississippi, Perryville came to be recognized as the high water mark of the western Confederacy. Some said the hard-fought battle, forever remembered by participants for its sheer savagery and for their commanders' confusion, was the worst battle of the war, losing the last chance to bring the Commonwealth into the Confederacy.

When Vicksburg fell to Union forces under General Grant in July 1863, the balance turned against the Confederacy in the trans-Appalachian theater. The Federal success along the river opened the way for advances into central and eastern Tennessee, which culminated in the bloody battle of Chickamauga and then a struggle for Chattanooga. Chickamauga is usually counted as a Confederate victory, albeit a costly one.

On April 14, 1860, the day Fort Sumter fell to Confederate forces, Washington, D.C. - surrounded by slave states and minimally defended - was ripe for invasion. In The Siege of Washington, John and Charles Lockwood offer a heart-pounding, minute-by-minute account of the first twelve days of the Civil War, when the fate of the Union hung in the balance. The fall of Washington would have been a disaster: it would have crippled the federal government, left the remaining Northern states in disarray, and almost certainly triggered the secession of Maryland.

Union General William T. Sherman knew that if his forces could take Atlanta, it would deal a fatal blow to the South as a whole. Second only to Richmond in population size for Confederate states, Atlanta was a vital transportation hub - hence the name "Gate City of the Deep South." Drawing on personal letters, diaries, reports, and recollections, this full-cast audio drama tells the unforgettable story of Sherman's pivotal campaign. Based on the Time Life Books series Voices of the Civil War.

The destruction of Atlanta is an iconic moment in American history - it was the centerpiece of the hugely successful book and movie Gone with the Wind. But though the epic sieges of Leningrad, Stalingrad, and Berlin have all been explored in best-selling histories, the one great American example has been treated only cursorily as a footnote. Marc Wortman remedies that conspicuous absence in grand fashion with The Bonfire.

The Mexican War introduced vast new territories into the United States, among them California and the present-day Southwest. When gold was discovered in California in the great Gold Rush of 1849, the population swelled, and settlers petitioned for admission to the Union. But the U.S. Senate was precariously balanced with 15 free states and 15 slave states. Up to this point, states had been admitted in pairs, one free and one slave, to preserve that tenuous balance in the Senate.

SHILOH, 1862 - The Battle of Shiloh, fought in the wilderness of southern Tennessee in April 1862, marked a violent crossroads in the Civil War. What began as a surprise attack by Confederate troops on a Union stronghold to gain control of the Mississippi River Valley became a bloody two-day conflict that would eerily foretell the brutal reality of the next three years.

Jefferson, Adams, and Franklin are known to all; men like Morgan, Greene, and Wayne are less familiar. Yet the dreams of the politicians and theorists became real only because fighting men were willing to take on the grim, risky, brutal work of war. The soldiers of the American Revolution were a diverse lot: merchants and mechanics, farmers and fishermen, paragons and drunkards. Most were ardent amateurs.

In 1851, Elizabeth Parker, a free black child in Chester County, Pennsylvania, was bound and gagged, snatched from a local farm, and hurried off to a Baltimore slave pen. Two weeks later, her teenage sister, Rachel, was abducted from another Chester County farm. Because slave catchers could take fugitive slaves and free blacks across state lines to be sold, the border country of Pennsylvania/Maryland had become a dangerous place for most black people.

Slave narratives are extremely rare. Of the 100 or so of these testimonies that survive, a mere handful are first-person accounts by slaves who ran away and freed themselves. Now two newly uncovered narratives, and the biographies of the men who wrote them, join that exclusive group.

In his presidential Farewell Address of 1796, George Washington presented a series of maxims to guide the construction of a wise foreign policy. He believed, as did generations of his adherents, that if the United States stayed true to the principles he discussed, the country would eventually attain national greatness and international respectability. By focusing on the enduring influence of the Farewell Address on 19th-century Americans, and on their abiding devotion to Washington, Jeffrey Malanson brings the Address back into the spotlight for 21st-century listeners.

The majority of Jewish immigrants who made their way to the United States between 1820 and 1924 arrived nearly penniless; yet today their descendants stand out as exceptionally successful. How can we explain their dramatic economic ascent? Have Jews been successful because of cultural factors distinct to them as a group, or because of the particular circumstances that they encountered in America?

"Hold On with a Bulldog Grip and Chew and Choke as Much as Possible": The Grand Offensive: (May–August 1864): The Spring Offensive is launched. A bogus presidential proclamation calling for volunteers and prayers causes panic throughout the North. Grant and Lee battle for six weeks until severe losses force them to a halt. Congressional Radicals pass a bill that will allow Southern States readmittance to the Union as long as they give an oath that they never supported the Confederacy. Southern leaders spread bogus peace overtures. Lincoln reaffirms his commitment to the Emancipation.

The image of the Baron de Steuben training Washington's ragged, demoralized troops in the snow at Valley Forge is part of the iconography of our Revolutionary heritage, but most history fans know little more about this fascinating figure.

James M. McPherson, who has led countless tours of Gettysburg over the years, reflects on the meaning of the battle, describes the events of those terrible three days in July 1863, and places the struggle in the greater context of American and world history. Along the way, he intersperses stories of his own encounters with the place over several decades, as well as debunking several popular myths about the battle itself.

This year marks the 10th anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, an occasion that is sure to be observed around the world. But among the memorials, political speeches, and news editorials, the most pressing consideration - and often the most overlooked - is the lives and well-being of the 9/11 first responders, their families, and the victims' families over the past decade. Dennis Smith, a former firefighter and the author of the bestselling Report from Ground Zero, addresses this important topic in a series of interviews....