In this powerfully narrated history, Maine historian Tom Desjardin tells the story of the 20th Maine Regiment, the soldiers who fought and won the battle of Little Round Top. This engaging work is the culmination of years of detailed research on the experiences of the soldiers in that regiment, telling the complete story of the unit in the Gettysburg Campaign, from June 21 through July 10, 1863. Desjardin uses more than seventy first-hand accounts to tell the story of this campaign in critical detail. He brings the personal experiences of the soldiers to life, relating the story from both sides and revealing the actions and feelings of the men from Alabama who tried, in vain, to seize Little Round Top. Indeed, ranging from the lowest ranking private to the highest officers, this book explores the terrible experiences of war and their tragic effect. Following the regiment through the campaign enables readers to understand fully the soldiers' feelings towards the enemy, towards citizens of both North and South, and towards the commanders of the two armies. In addition, this book traces the development of the legend of Gettysburg, as veterans of the fight struggle to remember, grasp, and memorialize their part in the largest battle ever fought on the continent. With a new preface and updated maps and illustrations, Stand Firm Ye Boys of Maine offers a compelling account of one of the most crucial small engagements of the Civil War.

    After his death, the contents of his studio, including thousands of glass negatives, were sold off for five dollars. For years the fragile negatives sat forgotten and deteriorating in cardboard boxes in an open carport. How did it happen, then, that the most implausible of events took place? That Disfarmer’s haunting portraits were retrieved from oblivion, that today they sell for upwards of $12,000 each at posh New York art galleries; his photographs proclaimed works of art by prestigious critics and journals and exhibited around the world? The story of Disfarmer’s rise to fame is a colorful, improbable, and ultimately fascinating one that involves an unlikely assortment of individuals. Would any of this have happened if a young New York photographer hadn't been so in love with a pretty model that he was willing to give up his career for her; if a preacher’s son from Arkansas hadn't spent 30 years in the Army Corps of Engineers mapping the U.S. from an airplane; if a magazine editor hadn't felt a strange and powerful connection to the work? The cast of characters includes these, plus a restless and wealthy young Chicago aristocrat and even a grandson of FDR. It’s a compelling story which reveals how these diverse people were part of a chain of events whose far-reaching consequences none of them could have foreseen, least of all the strange and reclusive genius of Heber Springs. Until now, the whole story has not been told.

    Lee, but genteel Southern ladies & escaped slaves, cavalry officers & common foot soldiers who fought in Yankee blue & Rebel gray. The Civil War also includes essays by historians of the era: Don E. Fehrenbacher, on the war's origins; Barbara J. Fields, on the freeing of slaves; Shelby Foote, on the soldiers & commanders; James M. McPherson, on the political dimensions; & C. Vann Woodward, assessing the America that emerged from the war's ashes.Introduction: The crossroads of our being1861: A house divided Why the war came/ Don E. Fehrenbacher1862: Forever freeWho freeds the slaves?/ Barbara J. Fields1863: The universe of battleMen at war: an interview with Shelby Foote1864: Most hallowed groundWar & politics/ James M. McPherson1865: The better angels of our natureWhat the war made us/ C. Vann Woodward

    An autobiography written by a Union mapmaker who witnessed the worst of the Civil War firsthand, including an account of his experiences during a two-year stay at the notorious Andersonville prison.

    Most contemporary accounts placed the blame for the tragedy squarely on the shoulders of the Confederates who administered the prison or on a conspiracy of higher-ranking officials. In this carefully researched and compelling revisionist account, William Marvel provides a comprehensive history of Andersonville Prison and conditions within it. Based on reliable primary sources - including diaries, Union and Confederate government documents, and letters - rather than exaggerated postwar recollections and such well-known but spurious "diaries" as that of John Ransom, Marvel's analysis exonerates camp commandant Henry Wirz and others from charges that they deliberately exterminated prisoners, a crime for which Wirz was executed after the war. According to Marvel, virulent disease and severe shortages of vegetables, medical supplies, and other necessities combined to create a crisis beyond Wirz's control. He also argues that the tragedy was aggravated by the Union decision to suspend prisoner exchanges, which meant that many men who might have returned home were instead left to sicken and die in captivity.

    

    Lee was one of the greatest generals to have ever lived. Although having fought for the slave-trading South during the American Civil War he was, and still is, regarded as a superb tactician and leader of men by both North and South. General Lee, written by his nephew and fellow soldier, Fitzhugh Lee, takes the reader to the heart of Lee’s life, from his family origins to his early career in the military as he became a military engineer and fought in the Mexican-American War. Through access to numerous unpublished letters and accounts Fitzhugh Lee provides fascinating insight into his uncle’s military genius throughout the American Civil War, from the Seven Days Battle to Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville to Gettysburg, right through until his eventual surrender to Grant in 1865. “General Lee remains a valuable book for students of Lee and his campaigns as well as those interested in southern efforts to write a military history of the Confederacy.” Gary W. Gallagher “Much solid narrative, interspersed with letters previously unpublished.” Douglas Southall Freeman Fitzhugh Lee was a Confederate cavalry general in the American Civil War and a United States Army general in the Spanish-American War. He also served as a diplomat for the United States and as the 40th Governor of Virginia. Along with General Lee which was published in 1894 he also wrote Cuba's Struggle Against Spain in 1899. He passed away in 1905.

    Uncover their mesmerizing, realistic stories of combat, courage, and distress in readable and balanced stories told from the front lines.Witness the creation of new technologies of destruction: tanks, planes, and submarines; machine guns and field artillery; poison gas and chemical warfare. It introduced U-boat packs and strategic bombing, unrestricted war on civilians and mistreatment of prisoners.World War I reduced Europe’s mightiest empires to rubble, killed twenty million people, and cracked the foundations of our modern world. In its wake, empires toppled, monarchies fell, and whole populations lost their national identities.If you like gripping, authentic accounts of life and combat during WWI, then you won't want to miss WWI: Tales from the Trenches.

    Lee and Ulysses S. Grant. Here are the two charismatic figures in their early years, in their roles as adversaries, and in their post-war lives.

    Lee's Lieutenants. 3 Volume Set. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, [1970-1971]. Later editions. Three octavo volumes. Publisher's binding and dust jacket.Folding map at rear of volume 3. All unquestioned masterpiecc of the historian's art, and a towering landmark in the literature of the American Civil War."Lee's Lieutenants: A Study in Command" is the most colorful and popular of all of Douglas Southall Freeman's works; it is generally considered the most penetrating study ever written of military personalities and tactics during the American Civil War. A sweeping narrative that presents a multiple biography against the flame-shot background of history, it is the story of the great figures of the Army of Northern Virginia who fought under Robert E. Lee as they came forward on the stage of war.In this first volume, "Manassas to Malvern Hill," Dr. Freeman describes the rise and fall of General Beauregard, the growing friction between Jefferson Davis and Joseph E. Johnston, the emergence and failure of a number of military charlatans, and the first display of ability on the part of some new men at a time when the organization developed at Manassas collapsed at Seven Pines. The narrative illumines the rise of "Stonewall" Jackson and traces his progress in the Shenandoah Valley campaign and into Richmond amid the acclaim of the South, accompanies him through the failures during the Seven Days, and then leaves him, with the new army entirely organized, in the center of the stage of history."Manassas to Malvern Hill" is the first volume of a three-volume work. In the second volume, the men whose reputations were made, or lost, on such fields as Manassas at the second battle of Bull Run, Antietam, Fredericksburg, and Chancellorsville dominate the narrative; volume three depicts the Gettysburg campaign and the thunder signaling the ruin of the Confederacy.

    The author assures us it is not!Three years before they came together, four young American men left their fraternities and college campuses for an adventure exceeding their imaginations. Wanting something more than the draft and unknown to each other, they chose Naval Aviation as the next step in their lives. Generally, they were better than their navy peers, all qualifying for high performance aircraft to be flown from steel decks over foreign seas. They would become the pointy end of the stick in aerial battles over North Vietnam, the most heavily defended patch of real estate in the history of aerial warfare. They were to do this in 1967, the year in which Naval Aviation experienced its greatest losses.These four young men, now Lieutenants Junior Grade, United States Navy, were ordered to Attack Squadron 34 to fly A4 Skyhawks into combat. They were assigned Junior Officer's stateroom 0111 aboard USS Intrepid, a venerable aircraft carrier with a distinguished history. This "bunkroom" better known to them as Triple Sticks was the repository for a log (in navy terms) or journal written by these four young aviators. Forty years later this log was the genesis of this memoir.In the lethal environment over the northern reaches of North Vietnam or ashore in the Officer's clubs and bars of Asia, the writing brings to life wonderful humor, bizarre behavior, vivid aerial battles, uncommon loyalty, anger, frustration and respect. One survived or did not according to his skill and luck.

    It was a battle that pitted Five hundred 1st Infantry Division soldiers against 800 to 2000 Viet Cong from the 271st Regiment. The bloody clash took the lives of 39 Americans and seriously wounded 150 more. It is the minute by minute story of what happened that day in the steamy jungle and the story of the men who fought so valiantly to survive the ambush. It is the story of the loved ones left behind and the wounded who struggled to become whole again. It's a story that is the result of talking to many of the survivors of the battle and the wives, brothers, sisters, or friends of those who were there when over 8000 artillery rounds rained down around LZ X-Ray to dislodge the entrenched Viet Cong. June 17, 1967 is a story of war, men, and the loved ones. It is the story of the youth, culture and happenings that made the battle of Xom Bo II such an enigma for the summer of love in 1967. It is an angry story and a healing story that will bring feelings to the surface and tear at your heart.

    History—As You’ve Never Seen Them Before!  Secret Lives of the Civil War features irreverent and uncensored profiles of men and women from the Union and the Confederacy—complete with hundreds of little-known and downright bizarre facts. You’ll discover that:        •  Mary Todd Lincoln claimed to receive valuable military strategies from ghosts in the spirit         world.      •  Jefferson Davis once imported camels for soldiers stationed in the American southwest.      •  Ulysses S. Grant spent much of the Vicksburg campaign on a horse named “Kangaroo.”      •  James Longstreet fought the Battle of Antietam wearing carpet slippers.      •  William T. Sherman was the victim of two shipwrecks on the same day.      •  Harriet Tubman experienced frequent and bizarre hallucinations.      •  Stonewall Jackson was a notorious hypochondriac (he always sat up straight, fearing that         slouching would compress his vital organs).   With chapters on everyone from William Quantrill (a guerilla leader whose skull later ended up in the basement of a fraternity house) to Rose O’Neal Greenhow (perhaps the South’s most glamorous spy), Secret Lives of the Civil War features a mix of famous faces and unsung heroes. American history was never this much fun in school!

    The Civil War is over and the South lies in ruins. But for some, the former slaveholders have not been punished enough. A cabal of powerful men, led by Charles A. Dana, the Assistant Secretary of War, plot to break the spirit of the South once and for all--by convicting General Robert E. Lee of treason and hanging him like a common criminal. To this end, they have convened a secret military tribunal in Lee's former home in Arlington, Virginia. Jeremiah O'Brien of The New York Tribune, a long-time protege of Dana's, is the only reporter allowed to attend the trial. His exclusive reports on this momentous event, and the book he intends to write, will surely make his fortune. Yet as the trial proceeds, pitting the general against his accusers, O'Brien finds himself torn between his loyalty to Dana, his love for a beautiful Confederate spy, and his growing respect and compassion for Lee himself. The young reporter is supposed to be only an observer, but, in the end, it is O'Brien who must evaluate the evidence . . . and determine the true meaning of honor.Written by acclaimed author and historian Thomas Fleming, The Secret Trial of Robert E. Lee brings to life a fascinating chapter in American history that might well have happened--and perhaps truly did.

     Louis P. Masur's The Civil War: A Concise History offers a masterful and eminently readable overview of the war's multiple causes and catastrophic effects. Masur begins by examining the complex origins of the war, focusing on the pulsating tensions over states rights and slavery. The book thenproceeds to cover, year by year, the major political, social, and military events, highlighting two important themes: how the war shifted from a limited conflict to restore the Union to an all-out war that would fundamentally transform Southern society, and the process by which the war ultimatelybecame a battle to abolish slavery. Masur explains how the war turned what had been a loose collection of fiercely independent states into a nation, remaking its political, cultural, and social institutions. But he also focuses on the soldiers themselves, both Union and Confederate, whose storiesconstitute nothing less than America's Iliad. In the final chapter Masur considers the aftermath of the South's surrender at Appomattox and the clash over the policies of reconstruction that continued to divide President and Congress, conservatives and radicals, Southerners and Northerners for yearsto come. In 1873, Mark Twain and Charles Dudley wrote that the war had wrought so profoundly upon the entire national character that the influence cannot be measured short of two or three generations. From the vantage of the war's sesquicentennial, this concise history of the entire Civil War era offersan invaluable introduction to the dramatic events whose effects are still felt today.