With April 12, 2011, set to mark the 150th anniversary of the start of the Civil War at Fort Sumter, the time is ripe for a new assessment of the conflict

    As one contemporary said, "They had...all the glamour of Robin Hood...all the courage and bravery of the ancient crusaders." Better known as Mosby's Rangers, they were an elite guerilla unit that operated with stunning success in northern Virginia and Maryland from 1863 to the last days of the war.In this vivid account of the famous command of John Singleton Mosby, Jeffrey D. Wert explores the personality of this iron-will commander and brilliant tactician and gives us colorful profiles of the officers who served under him. Drawing on contemporary documents, including letters and diaries, this is the most complete and vivid account to date of the fighting unit that was so hated by General Ulysses S. Grant that he ordered any captured Ranger to be summarily executed without trial.

    

    Carter’s thrilling new novel takes as its starting point an alternate history: President Abraham Lincoln survives the assassination attempt at Ford’s Theatre on April 14, 1865. Two years later he is charged with overstepping his constitutional authority, both during and after the Civil War, and faces an impeachment trial . . . Twenty-one-year-old Abigail Canner is a young black woman with a degree from Oberlin, a letter of employment from the law firm that has undertaken Lincoln’s defense, and the iron-strong conviction, learned from her late mother, that “whatever limitations society might place on ordinary negroes, they would never apply to her.” And so Abigail embarks on a life that defies the norms of every stratum of Washington society: working side by side with a white clerk, meeting the great and powerful of the nation, including the president himself.  But when Lincoln’s lead counsel is found brutally murdered on the eve of the trial, Abigail is plunged into a treacherous web of intrigue and conspiracy reaching the highest levels of the divided government. Here is a vividly imagined work of historical fiction that captures the emotional tenor of post–Civil War America, a brilliantly realized courtroom drama that explores the always contentious question of the nature of presidential authority, and a galvanizing story of political suspense.

    They are first- generation Americans, citizens of other nations, and lifelong New Yorkers. But they all share one thing: They honor their loved ones by living their lives with purpose, and a promise to never forget.These courageous family members share their grief and loss-and hope- speaking in their own words, with love, courage, and strength enough to inspire us all.

    Though Lincoln has been criticized by many historians for failing to appreciate the severity of the secession crisis that greeted his victory, Harold Holzer shows that the presidentelect waged a shrewd and complex campaign to prevent the expansion of slavery while vainly trying to limit secession to a few Deep South states.During this most dangerous White House transition in American history, the country had two presidents: one powerless (the president-elect, possessing no constitutional authority), the other paralyzed (the incumbent who refused to act). Through limited, brilliantly timed and crafted public statements, determined private letters, tough political pressure, and personal persuasion, Lincoln guaranteed the integrity of the American political process of majority rule, sounded the death knell of slavery, and transformed not only his own image but that of the presidency, even while makinginevitable the war that would be necessary to make these achievements permanent.Lincoln President-Elect is the first book to concentrate on Lincoln's public stance and private agony during these months and on the momentous consequences when he first demonstrated his determination and leadership. Holzer recasts Lincoln from an isolated prairie politician yet to establish his greatness, to a skillful shaper of men and opinion and an immovable friend of freedom at a decisive moment when allegiance to the founding credo "all men are created equal" might well have been sacrificed.

    Over a period of thirteen days the legendary detective Allan Pinkerton worked feverishly to detect and thwart the plot, assisted by a captivating young widow named Kate Warne, Americas first female private eye.As Lincolns train rolled inexorably toward the seat of danger, Pinkerton struggled to unravel the ever-changing details of the murder plot, even as he contended with the intractability of Lincoln and his advisors, who refused to believe that the danger was real. With time running out Pinkerton took a desperate gamble, staking Lincolns lifeand the future of the nationon a perilous feint that seemed to offer the only chance that Lincoln would survive to become president. Shrouded in secrecyand, later, mired in controversythe story of the Baltimore Plot is one of the great untold tales of the Civil War era, and Stashower has crafted this spellbinding historical narrative with the pace and urgency of a race-against-the-clock thriller.

    In He Has Shot the President! both Lincoln and Booth emerge as vivid characters, defined by the long and brutal Civil War, and set on a collision course toward tragedy. With his characteristic straightforward storytelling voice and dynamic water color illustration, Don Brown gives readers a chronological account of the events and also captures the emotion of the death of America's greatest president.

    Author GM Matheny was a US Navy saturation diver on the nuclear submarine USS Halibut. Involved in Operation Ivy Bells. America's most important (and most dangerous of the Cold War) clandestine operations. If you like good old fashioned American bravado, espionage and American history, you will enjoy this book. GOD & SPIES is a firsthand account of America's greatest intelligence coup! Operation Ivy Bells was not a onetime intercept of foreign intelligence but an ongoing operation of multiple Soviet military channels! Another reason for the high interest in our operation was the audacious nature in which it was done—with not one person risking his neck but the crews of two US Navy nuclear submarines which rendezvoused in Soviet territorial waters. “How did I end up as a navy diver, four hundred feet down in a frigid Russian sea? After making my dad totally disgusted with me, I set out to make him happy. ‘Honor thy father’ - I struggled with a decision to serve God. ‘Lord, I will give my life to you and serve you if you let me make this dive.’ But I had the impression He only wanted to know one thing: ‘What if I do not let you? Will you serve me anyway?’”

    A divided America is debating whether or not to go to war. The FBI and police, scrambling to thwart any attacks, round up the plotters. Experts declare that our intelligence capabilities are insufficient and that a new agency must be created. The year is 1941. Fifth Column is the story of Johanna Falck, a German immigrant who joins the new American central intelligence service. As Americans focus on the war in Europe and whether the United States should intervene, the FBI is rounding up scores of German spies. The German-American Bund, a pro-Nazi group of Americans suspected of being saboteurs and subversives, is at the center of the FBI's investigations. Johanna is recruited to infiltrate the Bund and discover what they and the Nazis have planned. Soon she is caught up in a far-reaching conspiracy, one that stretches from the top of the Nazi state to the streets of New York. What she finds shatters her most basic assumption about the Third Reich.

    On January 1, 1863, Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, doing precisely that. In between, however, was perhaps the most tumultuous six months of his presidency, an episode during which the sixteenth president fought bitterly with his generals, disappointed his cabinet, and sank into painful bouts of clinical depression. Most surprising, the man who would be remembered as "The Great Emancipator" did not hold firm to his belief in emancipation. He agonized over the decision and was wracked by private doubts almost to the moment when he inked the decree that would change a nation.Popular myth would have us believe that Lincoln did not suffer from such indecision, that he did what he did through moral resolve; that he had a commanding belief in equality, in the inevitable victory of right over wrong. He worked on drafts of the document for months, locking it in a drawer in the telegraph room of the War department. Ultimately Lincoln chose to act based on his political instincts and knowledge of the war. It was a great gamble, with the future of the Union, of slavery, and of the presidency itself hanging in the balance.In this compelling narrative, Todd Brewster focuses on these critical six months to ask: was it through will or by accident, intention or coincidence, personal achievement or historical determinism that he freed the slaves? The clock is always ticking in these pages as Lincoln searches for the right moment to enact his proclamation and simultaneously turn the tide of war. Lincoln's Gamble portrays the president as an imperfect man with an unshakable determination to save a country he believed in, even as the course of the Civil War remained unknown.

     Giving shape to the deep depression that pervaded Lincoln's adult life, Joshua Wolf Shenk's Lincoln's Melancholy reveals how this illness influenced both the president's character and his leadership. Lincoln forged a hard path toward mental health from the time he was a young man. Shenk draws from historical record, interviews with Lincoln scholars, and contemporary research on depression to understand the nature of his unhappiness. In the process, he discovers that the President's coping strategies—among them, a rich sense of humor and a tendency toward quiet reflection—ultimately helped him to lead the nation through its greatest turmoil.

    Filled with espionage, sabotage, and intrigue, it is also a striking portrait of a shrewd president who valued what his operatives uncovered. Veteran journalist Douglas Waller, who has written ground-breaking intelligence histories, turns his sights on the shadow war of four secret agents for the North—three men and one woman. From the tense days before Abraham Lincoln’s inauguration in 1861 to the surrender at Appomattox four years later, Waller delivers a fast-paced narrative of the heroes—and scoundrels—who informed Lincoln’s generals on the enemy positions for crucial battles and busted up clandestine Rebel networks.Famed detective Allan Pinkerton mounted a successful covert operation to slip Lincoln through Baltimore before his inauguration to foil an assassination attempt. But he failed as General George McClellan’s spymaster, delivering faulty intelligence reports that overestimated Confederate strength.George Sharpe, an erudite New York lawyer, succeeded Pinkerton as spymaster for the Union’s Army of the Potomac. Recruiting skilled operatives, some of whom dressed in Rebel uniforms, Sharpe ran highly successful intelligence operations that outpaced anything the enemy could field.Elizabeth Van Lew, a Virginia heiress who hated slavery and disapproved of secession, was one of Sharpe’s most successful agents. She ran a Union spy ring in Richmond out of her mansion, with dozens of agents feeding her military and political secrets she funneled to General Ulysses S. Grant as his army closed in on the Confederate capital. Van Lew became one of the unsung heroes of the war.Lafayette Baker was a handsome Union officer with a controversial past, whose agents clashed with Pinkerton’s operatives. The unscrupulous Baker assembled a retinue of disreputable spies, thieves, and prostitutes to root out traitors in Washington, D.C. But he failed at his most important mission: uncovering the threat to Lincoln from John Wilkes Booth and his gang.Behind these secret operatives was a president, one of our greatest, who was an avid consumer of intelligence and a ruthless aficionado of clandestine warfare, willing to take chances to win the war. Lincoln’s Spies, as Waller vividly depicts in his excellent new book, set the template for the dark arts the CIA would practice in the future.

    Lee and Jefferson Davis, and much more.

    Everything changes when she’s recruited into the Office of Strategic Services by family friend and legendary WWI hero Major General William Donovan.Donovan has faith in her—and in all his “glorious amateurs” who are becoming Anna’s fast friends: Maggie, Anna’s down-to-earth mentor; Irene, who’s struggling to find support from her husband for her clandestine life; and Julia, a cheerful OSS liaison. But the more Anna learns about the organization’s secret missions, the more she longs to be stationed abroad. Then comes the opportunity: go undercover as a spy in the French Resistance to help steal critical intelligence that could ultimately turn the tide of the war.Dispatched behind enemy lines and in constant danger, Anna is filled with adrenaline, passion, and fear. She’s driven to make a difference—for her country and for herself. Whatever the risk, she’s willing to take it to help liberate France from the shadows of occupation and to free herself from the shadows of her former life.