History - U. S. Civil War: Books

Drawn from letters, diaries, speeches, articles, poems, songs, military reports, legal opinions, and memoirs, The Civil War: The First Year gathers over 120 pieces by more than sixty participants to create a unique firsthand narrative of this great historical crisis.

This volume traces events from January 1862 to January 1863, an unforgettable portrait of the crucial year that turned a secessionist rebellion into a war of emancipation. Including eleven never-before- published pieces, here are more than 140 messages, proclamations, newspaper stories, letters, diary entries, memoir excerpts, and poems by more than eighty participants and observers.

Spanning the crucial months from January 1863 to March 1864, this third volume of The Library of America’s highly acclaimed four volume series presents an incomparable portrait of a nation at war with itself while illuminating the military and political events that brought the Union closer to victory and slavery closer to destruction. It brings together more than 140 contemporary letters, diary entries, speeches, articles, messages, and poems by more than eighty participants and observers.

Timothy L. Wesley examines the engagement of both northern and southern preachers in politics during the American Civil War, revealing an era of denominational, governmental, and public scrutiny of religious leaders. Controversial ministers risked ostracism within the local community, censure from church leaders, and arrests by provost marshals or local police.

Six hundred thousand lives were lost between 1861 and 1865, making the conflict between North and South the nation's deadliest war. If the "War Between the States" was the test of the young republic's commitment to its founding precepts, it was also a watershed in photographic history, as the camera recorded the epic, heartbreaking narrative from beginning to end--providing those on the home front, for the first time, with immediate visual access to the horrors of the battlefield.

The book introduces us to a heretofore little-known cast of Civil War heroes—among them an acrobatic militia colonel, an explorer’s wife, an idealistic band of German immigrants, a regiment of New York City firemen, a community of Virginia slaves, and a young college professor who would one day become president. Adam Goodheart takes us from the corridors of the White House to the slums of Manhattan, from the mouth of the Chesapeake to the deserts of Nevada, from Boston Common to Alcatraz Island, vividly evoking the Union at this moment of ultimate crisis and decision.

An illuminating study of the American struggle to comprehend the meaning and practicalities of death in the face of the unprecedented carnage of the Civil War.

Filled with fresh interpretations and information, puncturing old myths and challenging new ones,Battle Cry of Freedom is unquestionably the standard one-volume history of the Civil War.

In this spellbinding new history, Goldfield offers the first major new interpretation of the Civil War era since James M. McPherson's "Battle Cry of Freedom." Where past scholars have limned the war as a triumph of freedom, Goldfield sees it as America's greatest failure.

Acclaimed historian Amanda Foreman tells the fascinating story of the American Civil War and the major role played by Britain and its citizens in that epic struggle.

A brilliant new history--the most intimate and richly readable account we have had--of the climactic three-day battle of Gettysburg (July 1-3, 1863), which draws the reader into the heat, smoke, and grime of Gettysburg alongside the ordinary soldier, and depicts the combination of personalities and circumstances that produced the greatest battle of the Civil War, and one of the greatest in human history.