Rowling is today: author of a series of childrens books which shaped the imagination of a generation. Rooted in the heyday of the British Empire, Swallows and Amazons and its sequels described a nostalgic Utopia.Yet before that, Arthur Ransome, famous for different reasons. Between 1917 and 1924, as Russian correspondent for the Daily News and Manchester Guardian, he was an uncritical apologist for the Bolshevik regime, with unique access to the revolutionary leaders. As the Red Army engaged with an Allied invasion of Russia, Ransome was conducting a love affair with Evgenia Shelepina, private secretary to Leon Trotsky, then Soviet Commissar for War. As the intimate friend of Karl Radek, the Bolshevik Chief of Propaganda, he denied the Red Terror and compared Lenin to Oliver Cromwell. No English journalist was considered more controversial, or more damaging to British security. This is a fascinating, often chilling revision of an English icon through the most formative decade of the twentieth century.

    “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 U. 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. Lincoln’s Greatest Journey: Sixteen Days that Changed a Presidency, March 24 – April 8, 1865, by Noah Andre Trudeau offers the first comprehensive account of a momentous time.Lincoln traveled to City Point, Virginia, in late March 1865 to escape the constant interruptions in the nation’s capital that were carrying off a portion of his “vitality,” and to make his personal amends for having presided over the most destructive war in American history in order to save the nation. Lincoln returned to Washington sixteen days later with a renewed sense of purpose, urgency, and direction that would fundamentally shape his second term agenda.Previous coverage of this unprecedented trip―his longest break from the White House since he had taken office―has been sketchy at best, and often based on seriously flawed sources. Lincoln’s Greatest Journey represents the most extensively researched and detailed story of these decisive sixteen days at City Point in a narrative laden with many heretofore unpublished accounts. The richly shaped prose, a hallmark of Trudeau’s pen, rewrites much of the heretofore misunderstood story of what really happened to Lincoln during this time.A fresh, more complete picture of Lincoln emerges. This is Lincoln at a time of great personal and national change―the story of how he made peace with the past and became firmly future-focused, all set against a dramatically new narrative of what really happened during those last weeks of his life. It infuses the well-worn Lincoln narrative with fresh sources to fundamentally change an often-told story in ways large and small. Rather than treat Lincoln as a dead man walking when he returns to Washington, Trudeau paints him as he surely was―a changed man profoundly influenced by all that he experienced while at City Point.Lincoln’s Greatest Journey represents an important addition to the Lincoln saga. The conventional wisdom that there’s nothing new to be learned about Lincoln is due for a major reset.

    It saw Lincoln's assassination just five days later and a near-successful plot to decapitate the Union government, followed by chaos and coup fears in the North, collapsed negotiations and continued bloodshed in the South, and finally, the start of national reconciliation.In the end, April 1865 emerged as not just the tale of the war's denouement, but the story of the making of our nation.Jay Winik offers a brilliant new look at the Civil War's final days that will forever change the way we see the war's end and the nation's new beginning. Uniquely set within the larger sweep of history and filled with rich profiles of outsize figures, fresh iconoclastic scholarship, and a gripping narrative, this is a masterful account of the thirty most pivotal days in the life of the United States.

    In a book that draws a picture of Lincoln in court and at home during that memorable season of 1856, Fenster also offers a close-up look at Lincoln’s political work, much of it masterful, some of it adventurous, in building the party that would change his fate – and that of the nation.

    It has been quoted by popes, presidents, prime ministers, and revolutionaries around the world. From "Four score and seven years ago..." to "government of the people, by the people, for the people," Lincoln's words echo in the American conscience. Many books have been written about the Gettysburg Address and yet, as Lincoln scholar Gabor Boritt shows, there is much that we don't know about the speech. In "The Gettysburg Gospel" he reconstructs what really happened in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, on November 19, 1863. Boritt tears away a century of myths, lies, and legends to give us a clear understanding of the greatest American's greatest speech.In the aftermath of the bloodiest battle ever fought in North America, the little town of Gettysburg was engulfed in the worst man-made disaster in U.S. history: close to 21,000 wounded; very few doctors; heroic women coping in houses, barns, and churches turned into hospitals; dead horses and mules rotting in farmyards and fields; and at least 7,000 dead soldiers who had to be dug up, identified, and reburied. This was where Lincoln had to come to explain why the horror of war must continue.Planning America's first national cemetery revitalized the traumatized people of Gettysburg, but the dedication ceremonies overwhelmed the town. Lincoln was not certain until the last moment whether he could come. But he knew the significance of the occasion and wrote his remarks with care -- the first speech since his inauguration that he prepared before delivering it. A careful analysis of the Addressand the public reaction to it form the center of this book. Boritt shows how Lincoln responded to the politics of the time and also clarifies which text he spoke from and how and when he wrote the various versions. Few people initially recognized the importance of the speech; it was frequently and, at times, hilariously misreported. But over the years the speech would grow into American scripture. It would acquire new and broader meanings. It would be better understood, but also misunderstood and misinterpreted to suit beliefs very different from Lincoln's."The Gettysburg Gospel" is based on years of scholarship as well as a deep understanding of Lincoln and of Gettysburg itself. It draws on vital documents essential to appreciating Lincoln's great speech and its evolution into American gospel. This is an indispensable book for anyone interested in the Gettysburg Address, Abraham Lincoln, the Civil War, or American history.

    Parallels of the activities of the President with those of his assassin in an unforgettable, suspense- filled chronicle. 320 pages.

    Waugh takes us on Lincoln’s road to the Civil War. From Lincoln's first public rejection of slavery to his secret arrival in the capital, from his stunning debates with Stephen Douglas to his contemplative moments considering the state of the country he loved, Waugh shows us America as Lincoln saw it and as Lincoln described it. Much of this wonderful story is told by Lincoln himself, detailing through his own writing his emergence onto the political scene and the evolution of his beliefs about the Union, the Constitution, democracy, slavery, and civil war. Waugh brings Lincoln’s path into new reliefby letting the great man tell his own story, at a depth that brings us ever closer to understanding this mysterious, complicated, truly great man.

    Riley, UVA’s Miller CenterIn 1849, when Abraham Lincoln returned to Springfield, Illinois, after two seemingly uninspiring years in the U.S. House of Representatives, his political career appeared all but finished. His sense of failure was so great that friends worried about his sanity. Yet within a decade, Lincoln would reenter politics, become a leader of the Republican Party, win the 1860 presidential election, and keep America together during its most perilous period. What accounted for the turnaround?As Michael J. Gerhardt reveals, Lincoln’s reemergence followed the same path he had taken before, in which he read voraciously and learned from the successes, failures, oratory, and political maneuvering of a surprisingly diverse handful of men, some of whom he had never met but others of whom he knew intimately—Henry Clay, Andrew Jackson, Zachary Taylor, John Todd Stuart, and Orville Browning. From their experiences and his own, Lincoln learned valuable lessons on leadership, mastering party politics, campaigning, conventions, understanding and using executive power, managing a cabinet, speechwriting and oratory, and—what would become his most enduring legacy—developing policies and rhetoric to match a constitutional vision that spoke to the monumental challenges of his time.Without these mentors, Abraham Lincoln would likely have remained a small-town lawyer—and without Lincoln, the United States as we know it may not have survived. This book tells the unique story of how Lincoln emerged from obscurity and learned how to lead.

    . . Eight-year-old, Vern Harpole, wakes up on the front porch of a bakery he's never seen before. The frightened boy is discovered by the kind baker who returns him to the hotel where he'd been staying with his mother and young sister, only to learn they've left and have no intention of returning. With no trace of where they’ve gone or by what means they’re traveling, a search is impossible. Even the authorities have little help to offer. Being childless, the baker and his wife decide to give Vern a home. Initially, they see him as a means of cheap labor. But over time, a bond of love grows between them, and they find joy as a family. Yet Vern can't dismiss the hurtful feelings of abandonment, as well as many unanswered questions about his mother. Margaret Jordan has recently immigrated from Ireland to America. Like Vern, she's troubled by painful reminders of traumatic experiences that have irrevocably altered her life. She settles in Kansas City, where she finds employment at a local restaurant. When she and Vern cross paths, he immediately recognizes her pain and wants to help her, but it will take more than kindness to break through the protective walls she's built around herself. Determination pushes him to be persistent, needing to believe that love can be something more than forsaken.

    Buckley, Jr.—traces Abraham Lincoln's ambitious climb from provincial upstart to political powerhouse and calls for a renewal of the Lincoln ethic of relentless striving.Revered today across the political spectrum, Abraham Lincoln believed in a small but active government in a nation defined by aspiration. Fired by an indomitable ambition from a young age, the man who would be immortalized as the "railsplitter" never wanted to earn his living with an ax. He educated himself in a frontier environment characterized by mind-numbing labor and then turned his back on that world. All his life, he preached a gospel of work and discipline toward the all-important ends of self-improvement and individual advancement. As a Whig and then a Republican, he worked to smash the rural backwardness in which he was raised and the Southern plantation economy that depended on human bondage.Both were unacceptably stultifying of human potential. In short, Lincoln lived the American Dream and succeeded in opening a way to it for others. He saw in the nation's founding documents the unchanging foundation of an endlessly dynamic society. He embraced the market and the amazing transportation and communications revolutions beginning to take hold. He helped give birth to the modern industrial economy that arose before the Civil War and that took off after it.His vision of an upwardly mobile society that rewards and supports individual striving was wondrously realized. Now it is under threat. Economic stagnation and social breakdown are undermining mobility and the American way. To meet these challenges, Rich Lowry draws us back to the lessons of Lincoln. It is imperative, he argues, to preserve a fluid economy and the bourgeois virtues that make it possible for individuals to thrive within it.

    The assassination of President Abraham Lincoln stunned a nation that was just emerging from the chaos and calamity of the Civil War, and the president's untimely death altered the trajectory of postwar history. But to those who knew Booth, the event was even more shocking-for no one could have imagined that this fantastically gifted actor and well-liked man could commit such an atrocity. In Fortune's Fool, Terry Alford provides the first comprehensive look at the life of an enigmatic figure whose life has been overshadowed by his final, infamous act. Tracing Booth's story from his uncertain childhood in Maryland, characterized by a difficult relationship with his famous actor father, to his successful acting career on stages across the country, Alford offers a nuanced picture of Booth as a public figure, performer, and deeply troubled man. Despite the fame and success that attended Booth's career--he was billed at one point as "the youngest star in the world"--he found himself consumed by the Confederate cause and the desire to help the South win its independence. Alford reveals the tormented path that led Booth to conclude, as the Confederacy collapsed in April 1865, that the only way to revive the South and punish the North for the war would be to murder Lincoln--whatever the cost to himself or others. The textured and compelling narrative gives new depth to the familiar events at Ford's Theatre and the aftermath that followed, culminating in Booth's capture and death at the hands of Union soldiers 150 years ago. Based on original research into government archives, historical libraries, and family records, Fortune's Fool offers the definitive portrait of John Wilkes Booth.

    Chadwick is especially adept at retelling the intense emotions of this critical time, particularly especially in recounting abolitionist opposition to the Fugitive Slave Act and Jefferson Davis's passionate defense of this institution. For readers seeking to understand how individuals are agents of historical change will find Chadwick's account of the failed leadership of President James Buchanan, especially compelling.-G. Kurt Piehler, author of "Remembering War the American Way" and Associate Professor of History, The University of Tennessee1858 explores the events and personalities of the year that would send the America's North and South on a collision course culminating in the slaughter of 630,000 of the nation's young men, a greater number than died in any other American conflict. The record of that year is told in seven separate stories, each participant, though unaware, is linked to the oncoming tragedy by the central, though ineffective, figure of that time, the man in the White House, President James Buchanan. The seven figures who suddenly leap onto history's stage and shape the great moments to come are: Jefferson Davis, who lived a life out of a Romantic novel, and who almost died from herpes simplex of the eye; the disgruntled Col. Robert E. Lee, who had to decide whether he would stay in the military or return to Virginia to run his family's plantation; William Tecumseh Sherman, one of the great Union generals, who had been reduced to running a roadside food stand in Kansas; the uprising of eight abolitionists in Oberlin, Ohio, who freed a slave apprehended by slave catchers, and set off a fiery debate across America; a dramatic speech by New York Senator William Seward in Rochester, which foreshadowed the civil war and which seemed to solidify his hold on the 1860 Republican Presidential nomination; John Brown's raid on a plantation

    Like William Clarke Quantrill and "Bloody Bill" Anderson, Samuel Hildebrand was a proud Missouri bushwhacker. In this long out of print book, Hildebrand describes raids and executions his band of men carried out. He remained at the end of the war and unreconstructed rebel and fervent racist. Like many of his southern brethren who fought, he never owned slaves but kept a captured black man with him after the war. This self-serving but fascinating account is a valuable addition to the canon of Civil War literature. In it, Hildebrand claims that others have tried to tell his story but have gotten it wrong, so he has a notarized statement by prominent men included as verification of authenticity. Every memoir of the American Civil War provides us with another view of the catastrophe that changed the country forever. For the first time ever, this long-out-of-print book is available as an affordable, well-formatted book for e-readers and smartphones. Be sure to LOOK INSIDE or download a sample.

    Find out what stopped her in this vivid reimagining of Lincoln's assassinationIn 1864 Washington, one has to be careful with talk of secession. Better to speak only when in the company of the trustworthy, like Mrs. Surratt. A widow who runs a small boarding house, Mary Surratt isn't half as committed to the cause as her son, Johnny. If he's not escorting veiled spies, he's inviting home men like John Wilkes Booth, the actor who is even more charming in person than he is on the stage. But when President Lincoln is killed, the question of what Mary knew becomes more important than anything else.Based on the true history of Mary Surratt, Hanging Mary reveals the untold story of those on the other side of the assassin's gun.

    The Gestapo is closing in. On foot, by train, even on water, Becker is running and gunning for his life ... and for the world. Hitler's Third Reich is rearming and planning for war. Churchill wants to stop him, but only Becker's report can reverse the British mood of appeasement. Cornered by the Gestapo, desperate to save his German collaborator Maria, Becker has mere days to ward off double disaster...