The Atomic Outhouse, Hot Extractions, Listening Out, and Best Vacation Ever, will have you enthralled. These stories and sixty more like them pull no punches to give you a genuine understanding of a war that was more bizarre than you ever imagined.

    Still unfit for active duty after nine months in hospital, he is recruited by an unorthodox colonel named Valentine Burdette to work in the Provost Marshal General’s office in Washington. The beleaguered Capital, now swollen to seven times its pre-war population, is filled with saloons, brothels, spies, thieves and murderers. It is also rife with official corruption and political intrigue. While investigating what appears to be a routine case of military procurement fraud, Kit becomes embroiled in the murder of a beautiful young woman who has had the misfortune to attend the birthday party of Union General Joseph Hooker, the notorious and charming libertine.The investigation leads Kit through a series of harrowing adventures—both on the battlefield and in the Capital’s darkest dens of depravity—until he and Val Burdette must confront a vast criminal conspiracy that threatens both their own lives as well as the fate of the Republic. This riveting thriller by the award-winning author of the critically-acclaimed Stonewall’s Gold hauntingly brings to life one of the most dramatic periods of the Civil War.

    Those ex-slaves were in their declining years by the time of the Great Depression, but Elizabeth Sparks, Elige Davison, and others like them nonetheless provided a priceless record of life under the yoke: where slaves lived, how they were treated, what they ate, how they worked, how they adjusted to freedom. Here, Belinda Hurmence presents the interviews of 21 former Virginia slaves. This is a companion volume to Hurmence's popular collections of North Carolina and South Carolina slave narratives, My Folks Don't Want Me to Talk About Slaveryand Before Freedom, When I Just Can Remember.

    It is one of the most popular historical destinations in the United States. Most visitors tour the field by following the National Park Service's suggested auto tour. The standard tour, however, skips crucial monuments, markers, battle actions, town sites, hospital locations, and other hidden historical gems that should be experienced by everyone. These serious oversights are fully rectified in The Complete Gettysburg Guide, penned by noted Gettysburg historian J. David Petruzzi and illustrated with the lavish, full-color photography and maps (70) of Civil War cartographer Steven Stanley.Complete, detailed, and up-to-date, The Complete Gettysburg Guide: Walking and Driving Tours of the Battlefield, Town, Cemeteries, Field Hospital Sites, and other Topics of Historical Interest includes:- Detailed driving and walking tours of the entire battlefield (including obscure sites that even veteran visitors miss or never hear about);- A tour of every identified field hospital site for both armies;- Tours of the National Cemetery and the town's Evergreen Cemetery;- A tour of the town of Gettysburg, including sites of historical interest before and after the battle;- Outlying battlefields including the June 26, 1863 skirmish site, East Cavalry Field, South Cavalry Field, Hunterstown, Hanover, and Fairfield;- And a special tour of the various rock carvings on the battlefield, many of which were created by returning veterans and pre-date most of the monuments.Every student of Gettysburg, novice and expert alike, will want to learn from, enjoy, and treasure The Complete Gettysburg Guide. No visitor to Gettysburg will want to be without it.

    Apart from this, many a times each state of each nation has role models from the past but not forgotten history. Maharashtra has its own idols. The greatest and most loved of them all is shivaji maharaj.

    Abandoned by her political masters, Beth must evade Rebel soldiers and the bomb's mastermind to deliver the information to Washington before the conspirators can launch their deadly attack.Assisted by the Federal officer who loves her, Beth risks more than her life to snuff out the burning fuse of the world's first vehicle bomb and prevent disaster on the eve of victory.With its strong and resourceful heroine, Saving Lincoln will appeal to fans of Cold Mountain and Eye of the Needle.

     Under the command of Col. John S. Mosby they executed small raids behind Union lines, raiding at will and then vanishing quickly into the countryside to remain undetected. Formally known as the 43rd Battalion, Virginia Cavalry, they were formed after the Partisan Ranger Act of 1862. By the summer of 1864 Mosby had around four hundred men at his disposal in six cavalry companies and one artillery company. Their success led to the area around Fauquier and Loudoun counties becoming known as “Mosby’s Confederacy”, due to the grip that he and his men held on the area. James Joseph Williamson was private who fought under Mosby from April, 1863, through until the end of the war. He records in fascinating detail the activity of Mosby and his men from their companies organization until the moment that they were disbanded. Williamson provides brilliant insight into the campaigns that Mosby’s men fought, how they were organized, who led them, the difficulties they faced, as well as their greatest victories. The effectiveness of Mosby and his small band can be seen in these two statements: General Lee said that Mosby was “zealous bold, and skillful, and with very small resources he has accomplished a great deal.” While on the Union side, “General at one point reported that seventeen thousand of his men were engaged in keeping Mosby from attacking his weak points, and thus away from active service on the firing line. Finally it was not safe to send despatches by a courier unless a regiment was sent along to guard him." Yet, after the war, Grant held no animosity against his former foe, and stated “I have come to know Mosby personally and somewhat intimately. He is a different man entirely from what I supposed. … He is able and thoroughly honest and truthful. There were probably but few men in the South who could have commanded successfully a separate detachment in the rear of an opposing army, and so near the borders of hostilities as long as he did without losing his entire command.” Thus demonstrating the respect that Mosby and his men engendered with their enemies even after the war. Mosby’s Rangers is a perfect book for anyone interested in the partisan activities of Mosby and his men through the course of the American Civil War. James Joseph William was one of Mosby’s Rangers from 1863 through until the end of the war. His book was first published in New York in 1896 and he passed away in 1915.

    The victims were Ebora Alexander, Dietra Alexander, Damani Garner, and Damon Bonner—the mother, sister, and nephews of retired All-Pro cornerback for the San Francisco 49ers Kermit Alexander. In his own words, Kermit Alexander finally shares the full story of what happened to his loved ones and the aftermath of that tragic day. He recounts the hours leading up to the massacre, and how afterward he lost himself in the LA underworld, pleading, bribing, and threatening in a search for answers. He describes his journey through the “wilderness” of despair—the years of isolation living out of his car, broke, depressed, and sick. We also learn about his coming-of-age in 1950s LA, the following decade he spent in the NFL, the events leading up to that fateful August day, and finally the shocking truth behind the murders. Kermit opens up about his darkest hours, but also what it took to turn his life around, rebuild his family, and ultimately find peace. Ominous and intense, powerful and uplifting, tragic and triumphant, The Valley of the Shadow of Death is more than a rendering of one man’s adversity; it’s testament to the value of family and the resilience of the human spirit in the face of overwhelming loss.

    Each carries private wounds and powerful secrets as they head for Texas, following dangerous roads rife with ruthless vigilantes and soldiers still fighting a war lost a decade before. For Lavinia and Juneau Jane, the journey is one of inheritance and financial desperation, but for Hannie, torn from her mother and eight siblings before slavery's end, the pilgrimage westward reignites an agonizing question: Could her long-lost family still be out there? Beyond the swamps lie the seemingly limitless frontiers of Texas and, improbably, hope.Louisiana, 1987 For first-year teacher Benedetta Silva, a subsidized job at a poor rural school seems like the ticket to canceling her hefty student debt--until she lands in a tiny, out-of-step Mississippi River town. Augustine, Louisiana, seems suspicious of new ideas and new people, and Benny can scarcely comprehend the lives of her poverty-stricken students. But amid the gnarled oaks and run-down plantation homes lies the century-old history of three young women, a long-ago journey, and a hidden book that could change everything.

    

    Author and historian Albert Buchanan recreates the engagements of the Pacific and Atlantic combat theaters with near clinical detail, from the Pearl Harbor Attack to the Japanese surrender aboard the USS Missouri. Interwoven within these aerial combat narratives is background information on technological innovations, production methods, training programs, and the important players involved. This new edition of The Navy's Air War: A Mission Completed includes annotations and photographs from World War 2. *Annotations. *Images.

    But despite Mandela’s mission of reconciliation, rampant inequality remains; race relations are uneasy, violence is endemic and many in the ANC appear to have lost sight of the liberation ideals. With the election in 2009 of Jacob Zuma, a charismatic populist embroiled in scandal, uncertainty over the trajectory of the nation has only intensified. South Africa now stands at a crossroads, and award-winning journalist Alec Russell draws on his deep knowledge of the country to tell us how it got there and to give us a compelling account, revised and updated for this edition, of the journey from Mandela to Zuma.

    A vivid and eloquent book." --Stephen W. Sears, author of Gettysburg"Little Round Top has become iconic in Civil War literature and American memory. In the emotional recollection of our great war, if there was one speck on the landscape that decided a battle and the future of a nation, then surely this was it. The story of the July 2, 1863 struggle for that hill outside Gettysburg goes deeper into our consciousness than that, however. The men who fought for it then and there believed it to be decisive, and that is why they died for it. Glenn W. LaFantasie's Twilight at Little Round Top addresses that epic struggle, how those warriors felt then and later, and their physical and emotional attachment to a piece of ground that linked them forever with their nation's fate. This is military and social history at its finest." --W.C. Davis, author of Lincoln's Men and An Honorable Defeat"Few military episodes of the Civil War have attracted as much attention as the struggle for Little Round Top on the second day of Gettysburg. This judicious and engaging book navigates confidently through a welter of contradictory testimony to present a splendid account of the action. It also places events on Little Round Top, which often are exaggerated, within the broader sweep of the battle. All readers interested in the battle of Gettysburg will read this book with enjoyment and profit." --Gary W. Gallagher, author of The Confederate War"In his beautifully written narrative, Glenn LaFantasie tells the story of the battle for Little Round Top from the perspective of the soldiers who fought and died in July 1863. Using well-chosen quotes from a wide variety of battle participants, TWILIGHT puts the reader in the midst of the fight--firing from behind boulders with members of the 4th Alabama, running up the hillside into battle with the men of the 140th New York, and watching in horror as far too many men die. This book offers an elegy to the courage of those men, a meditation on the meaning of war, and a cautionary tale about the sacrifices nations ask of their soldiers and the causes for which those sacrifices are needed." --Amy Kinsel, Winnrer of the 1993 Allan Nevins Prize for From These Honored Dead: Gettysburg in American Culture

    Richard Coles, led a pilgrimage to all the major historic sites of the Holy Land: from Nazareth and the Sea of Galilee in the North, via Jericho and the Jordan River, to Bethlehem and, finally, Jerusalem. All of the pilgrims in his care were practising Christians, except one: the writer Kevin Jackson, a diffident and sympathetic atheist intrigued by the chance to take part in this modern-day version of an ancient act of piety, and to learn some more about his old friend, the media clergyman.Coles to Jerusalem is Kevin Jackson’s light-hearted diary of that pilgrimage, and a close-up portrait of Richard Coles both as priest and as man. As the journey proceeds, Coles reminisces at length about his past life as a rock star and radical gay agitator, his new life as a spiritual leader and a popular broadcaster on BBC radio and television, and the strange, unpredictable path that led him from self-destructive debauchery to faith and vocation.With a lively supporting cast of fellow pilgrims, Coles to Jerusalem ranges among the magnificence of ancient monuments and the banalities of the guided tour, the grim political background of contemporary Israel and the comedy of a group of idiosyncratic English folk abroad, the intensity of worship and the lightness of banter. It will be irresistible to all admirers of Richard Coles, who has contributed a foreword; and a revelation to those who have never encountered his wisdom and warmth.

    Others are often summed up in a few words: the stubborn, taciturn Grant; the gentlemanly, gifted Lee; the stomping, cursing Sheridan; and the flamboyant, boyish Stuart. But the enigmatic Sherman still manages to elude us. Probably no other figure of his day divides historians so deeply-leading some to praise him as a genius, others to condemn him as a savage.Now, in Sherman, Lee Kennett offers a brilliant new interpretation of the general's life and career, one that embraces his erratic, contradictory nature. Here we see the making of a true soldier, beginning with a colorful view of Sherman's rich family tradition, his formative years at West Point, and the critical period leading up to the Civil War, during which Sherman served in the small frustrated peacetime army and saw service in the South and California, and in the Mexican War Trying to advance himself, Sherman resigned from the army and he soon began to distinguish hiniself as a general known for his tenacity, vision, and mercurial temper. Throughout the spirited Battles of Bull Run and Shiloh, the siege of Vicksburg, and ultimately the famous march to the sea through Georgia, no one displayed the same intensity as did Sherman.From the heights of success to the depths of his own depression, Sherman managed to forge on after the war with barely a moment of slowing down. Born to fight, he was also born to lead and to provoke, traits he showed by serving as commanding general of the army, cutting a wide swath through the western frontier, and finally writing his classic -- and highly controversial -- memoirs. Eventually Sherman would die famous, well-to-do, and revered -- but also deeply misunderstood.By drawing on previously unexploited materials and maintaining a sharp, lively narrative, Lee Kennett presents a rich, authoritative portrait of Sherman, the man and the soldier, who emerges from this work more human and more fascinating than ever before.