Quick on the Draw


Gordon Landsborough - 2016
     Imprisoned for a crime he never committed, deserted by the woman he loved and betrayed by his own family. His bad luck seems to be running out when he is released early from prison and finds a job on the railroads. But it doesn’t last long. First he gets into a fight with a man who turns up dead. Then, while still on the run, his train is held up by his own brother’s gang. Then he somehow manages to offend the railroad boss’ daughter, the beautiful Elizabeth. With the fates out to get him, Glen has to use all his wits and strength to take control of his own destiny. Will that be enough to see him through, or will his past catch up with him before he gets a chance? Quick on the Draw is a hard fighting story of the Old West, where lives were cheap and danger was great. Praise for Gordon Landsborough 'A punchy tale coupled with plenty of action - an engaging read!' - Philip McCormac, bestselling western author Gordon Landsborough (1913-1984) was a publisher, author and bookseller. Writing tales about the exploits of gun-toting cowboys fighting out on the arid sands of the Wild West, Landsborough was himself a pioneering in the English paperback publishing world of the 1950s. He was widely known amongst his peers as the ‘maverick publishing genius’. Pioneering Press is an imprint of Endeavour Press, the UK’s leading independent digital publisher. We publish new and classic westerns by authors from the US and the UK. Follow us on Twitter: @PioneeringPress Goodreads: www.goodreads.com/PioneeringPress

Siege of Azalea Plantation (Azalea Plantation #1)


B.J. Robinson - 2015
     That becomes hard to do when Lieutenant Reese Armstrong sieges it for use as a hospital for his wounded soldiers and encampment grounds during the forty-seven day standoff for control of the Mississippi River before the surrender of Vicksburg. Widow Alexis Bella Seaborne led a sheltered life in the arms of massive oaks at Azalea Plantation with her husband Luke Wyatt until the Civil War forced her to forget about the elegant dress of a lady and embrace survival when a Yankee officer took control of her home. Reese never thought he’d fall for a Southern belle, but he can’t deny the attraction he feels each time Alexis’s haunted blue eyes show passion for the home she loves and her beloved South. He can’t help but envy the love and regard she held for her husband and longs for love like it. Alexis never thought she could love again when her husband died in the war. How could she fall for a Yankee when Union soldiers killed him? Left with nothing but a war-ravaged rundown plantation after the invasion of an ocean of blue, can she find trust and faith to move on? As movement flutters in her stomach, can she let go of the past to find a future for her and her unborn child? Her first love was sweet, young, and innocent, and she loved him with all of her heart, yet this handsome Yankee devil invaded her home and made her blood sizzle. His touch seared her skin as well as her heart. Worse yet, his kisses entrapped her lips and devoured her, consuming her with a passion that told her she was still alive and had not been buried with her husband. Despite her efforts to die on the inside, he awoke the spirit, heart, and passion she thought she’d buried for good. Book one of a two book serial, but may be read as a stand-alone. The second book will pick up with Reese still battling the raging Civil War and focus on the ending of the war. This one focused on the Battle of Vicksburg.

A Strange and Blighted Land: Gettysburg: The Aftermath of a Battle


Gregory A. Coco - 1995
    Remarkably few who study it contemplate what came after the armies marched away. Who would care for the tens of thousands of wounded? What happened to the thousands of dead men, horses, and tons of detritus scattered in every direction? How did the civilians cope with their radically changed lives? Gregory Coco's A Strange and Blighted Land. Gettysburg: The Aftermath of a Battle offers a comprehensive account of these and other issues.The late Coco was a park ranger at Gettysburg deeply interested in the battle and what was left in its wake. The Vietnam veteran who wrote well and often about the battle waxes eloquently about the carnage of war, its terrors and pain, its irreplaceable cost in human life and treasure, and the toll it took on the families who lost sons and husbands there.Arranged in a series of topical chapters, A Strange and Blighted Land begins with a tour of the battlefield, mostly through eyewitness accounts, of the death and destruction littering the sprawling landscape. Once the size and scope is exposed to readers, Coco moves on to discuss the dead of Gettysburg, North and South, how their remains were handled, and how and why the Gettysburg National Cemetery was established. The treatment of the wounded, Union and Confederate, was organized chaos. Every house and barn became of hospital or medical station, and the medical and surgical practices of the day were little short of compassionate torture. The author also discusses at length how prisoners were handled and the fate of the thousands of stragglers and deserters left behind once the armies left before concluding with the preservation efforts that culminated in the establishment of the Gettysburg National Military Park in 1895.Coco's prose is gripping, personal, and brutally honest. There is no mistaking where he comes down on the issue: There was nothing pretty or glorious or romantic about a battle--especially once the fighting ended.

Gettysburg--The First Day


Harry W. Pfanz - 2001
    With this book, however, the critical first day's fighting finally receives its due. After sketching the background of the Gettysburg campaign and recounting the events immediately preceding the battle, Harry Pfanz offers a detailed tactical description of events of the first day. He describes the engagements in McPherson Woods, at the Railroad Cuts, on Oak Ridge, on Seminary Ridge, and at Blocher's Knoll, as well as the retreat of Union forces through Gettysburg and the Federal rally on Cemetery Hill. Throughout, he draws on deep research in published and archival sources to challenge many long-held assumptions about the battle.

Controversies & Commanders: Dispatches from the Army of the Potomac


Stephen W. Sears - 1999
      From an award-winning military historian and the bestselling author of Gettysburg, this is a wide-ranging collection of essays about the Army of the Potomac, delving into such topics as Professor Lowe’s reconnaissance balloons; the court-martial of Fitz John Porter; the Lost Order at Antietam; press coverage of the war; the looting of Fredericksburg; the Mud March; the roles of volunteers, conscripts, bounty jumpers, and foreign soldiers; the notorious Gen. Dan Sickles, who shot his wife’s lover outside the White House; and two generals who were much maligned: McClellan (justifiably) and Hooker (not so justifiably).   This lively book follows the Army of the Potomac throughout the war, from 1861 to 1865, painting a remarkable portrait of the key incidents and personalities that influenced the course of our nation’s greatest cataclysm.

Gettysburg, Day Three


Jeffry D. Wert - 2001
    Wert re-creates the last day of the bloody Battle of Gettysburg in astonishing detail, taking readers from Meade's council of war to the seven-hour struggle for Culp's Hill -- the most sustained combat of the entire engagement. Drawing on hundreds of sources, including more than 400 manuscript collections, he offers brief excerpts from the letters and diaries of soldiers. He also introduces heroes on both sides of the conflict -- among them General George Greene, the oldest general on the battlefield, who led the Union troops at Culp's Hill. A gripping narrative written in a fresh and lively style, Gettysburg, Day Three is an unforgettable rendering of an immortal day in our country's history.

Generals South, Generals North: The Commanders of the Civil War Reconsidered


Alan Axelrod - 2011
    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

The Best of American Heritage: The Civil War


Edwin S. Grosvenor - 2015
    The Civil War posed a critical test of the young nation's character, endurance, and will to survive. Coming only two generations after the nation's founding, the secession of Southern states challenged the very existence of the United States. "America's most monumental drama and morality tale" comes alive in this brilliant collection from America's leading history magazine, as selected by its current editor-in-chief, Edwin S. Grosvenor.

The Battle of Gettysburg


Craig L. Symonds - 2017
    Lee's retreat through Pennsylvania and escape across the Potomac. Award-winning historian Craig L. Symonds recounts the events of three hot, brutal days in July when Americans struggled battled one another across a dozen square miles of rolling Pennsylvania countryside. Symonds details the military strategy of both sides, including the Confederate decision to invade the North, the cat-and-mouse game in Maryland and Pennsylvania, and, finally, the terrible clash of arms on the hills and fields of Gettysburg. Firsthand accounts humanize generals and individual soldiers of the Blue and Gray who fought for their lives, their homes, and their convictions. This is the story of Gettysburg as it has never been told before.

The True Story of Andersonville Prison: A Defense of Major Henry Wirz


James Madison Page - 1908
     Forty years later, in 1908, Page wrote this memoir to dispel the slanders told about Wirz. Page explains how the prison Wirz was in charge of was designed to hold, at most, 10,000 prisoners. The population quickly swelled to 30,000 prisoners, overwhelming the South's ability to feed, clothe and house the Andersonville prisoners. Over 13,000 POWs died out of 45,000 prisoners due to disease and diet, and Page claims that Wirz was made a scapegoat to appease the wrath of the families of those who had died. ‘a good read and very different than what is force fed us’ - Civil War Talk James Madison Page was born on July 22, 1839 in Crawfordville, Pennsylvania. He served in the Union army as 2d Lieutenant of Company A, Sixth Michigan Cavalry. After participating in many skirmishes and battles, including Gettysburg, Page was captured on September 21, 1863 along the Rapidan in Virginia and spent the next thirteen months in Southern military prisons, seven of which were at Camp Sumter near Andersonville, Georgia. After the war, Page was supoenaed for the war crimes trial of Major Henry Wirz, the former commandant of the prison, but after being interviewed, the prosecution decided not to call him as a witness because his testimony undermined the predetermined guilt of the accused. Having been present at the prison in the summer of 1864, when the atrocities were said to have occurred, Page denied that any of the four murders charged to Wirz had happened, which denial was supported by the fact that the alleged deceased were never named. After being dissuaded by his sister from joining the ill-fated Indian foray in the West under the command of General George Custer, Page instead moved to the Montana Territory in 1866, where he worked as a Government surveyor. The town of Pageville in Madison County was named in his honor. Page spent his final years in Long Beach, California, where he died in 1924. The True Story of Andersonville Prison was first published in 1908.

The Last Full Measure: The Life and Death of the First Minnesota Volunteers


Richard Moe - 1993
    

Reign of Iron: The Story of the First Battling Ironclads, the Monitor and the Merrimack


James L. Nelson - 2004
    After a year-long scramble to finish first, in a race filled with intrigue and second guessing, blundering and genius, the two ships -- the Monitor and the Merrimack -- after a four-hour battle, ended the three-thousand-year tradition of wooden men-of-war and ushered in "the reign of iron."In the first major work on the subject in thirty-five years, novelist, historian, and tall-ship sailor James L. Nelson, acclaimed author of the Brethren of the Coast trilogy, brilliantly recounts the story of these magnificent ships, the men who built and fought them, and the extraordinary battle that made them legend.

War Like the Thunderbolt: The Battle and Burning of Atlanta


Russell S. Bonds - 2009
    Union commander William Tecumseh Sherman’s relentless fight for the city secured the reelection of Abraham Lincoln, sealed the fate of the Southern Confederacy, and set a precedent for military campaigns that endures today. Its depiction in the novel and motion picture Gone with the Wind established the fight for Atlanta as an iconic episode in our nation’s most terrible war. In War Like the Thunderbolt: The Battle and Burning of Atlanta, award-winning author Russell S. Bonds takes the reader behind the lines and across the smoky battlefields of Peachtree Creek, Atlanta, Ezra Church, and Jonesboro, and into the lives of fascinating characters, both the famous and the forgotten, including the fiery and brilliant Sherman; General John Bell Hood, the Confederacy’s last hope to defend Atlanta; Benjamin Harrison, the diminutive young Indiana colonel who would rise to become President of the United States; Patrick Cleburne, the Irishmanturned- Southern officer; and ten-year-old diarist Carrie Berry, who bravely withstood and bore witness to the fall of the city. Here also is the dramatic story of the ordeal of Atlanta itself—the five-week artillery bombardment, the expulsion of its civilian population, and the infamous fire that followed. Based on new research in diaries, newspapers, previously unpublished letters, and other archival sources, War Like the Thunderbolt is a combination of captivating narrative and insightful military analysis—a stirring account of the battle and burning of the “Gate City of the South.”

Military Memoirs of a Confederate: A Critical Narrative


Edward Porter Alexander - 1993
    His memoirs, however, has earned him the most fame, and is one of the most cited accounts of the Civil War.

Gettysburg: A Journey in Time


William A. Frassanito - 1975
    The reader is transported to the battlefield by the photographs and through the analysis of the photographs to the battle itself. We watch it unfold, action by action. In meticulous close-up fashion, with documentary force, we see the terrible encounters of men at war.