American Civil War Memoirs

Nelson Appleton Miles (1839 - 1925) was an American military general. From 1895 to 1903, he served as the last commanding general of the United States Army before the office was abolished. The 1911 autobiography of General Miles is titled Serving the Republic, and chronicles his career as a soldier. He participated in many of the battles of the Civil War as a volunteer and afterwards took part as a commander in most of the Indian campaigns on the Western plains. His final service was in the Spanish-American War.

Beneath the surface of the apparently untutored and deceptively frank Abraham Lincoln ran private tunnels of self-taught study, a restless philosophical curiosity, and a profound grasp of the fundamentals of democracy. Now, in Lincoln: A Very Short Introduction, the award-winning Lincoln authority Allen C. Guelzo offers a penetrating look into the mind of one of our greatest presidents.

Buffalo Bill was an American soldier, bison hunter, and showman. He thrilled audiences far and wide with his Wild West shows, and he showed the world that the characters they read about in dime novels and magazines were real flesh and blood people. For many, Buffalo Bill has become the embodiment of the wild frontier, and both his legacy and his spirit continues to live on.

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of George VI: The Dutiful King by Philip Ziegler, read by Charlie Anson. If Ethelred was notoriously 'Unready' and Alfred 'Great', King George VI should bear the designation of 'George the Dutiful'. Throughout his life he dedicated himself to the pursuit of what he thought he ought to be doing rather than what he wanted to do. Inarticulate and loathing any sort of public appearances, he accepted that it was his destiny to figure regularly and conspicuously in the public eye, gritted his teeth, largely conquered his crippling stammer and got on with it.

Mosby, the "Gray Ghost" of the Confederate lore that celebrates the Lost Cause, has an image that has proven nearly impossible to corrupt or change, and time has done little good against it. Unlike the vanished 19th century code of honor that he represented, Mosby has retained the image and all its connotations. But that image, which he helped fashion, was mostly an invention

In this multifaceted portrait, acclaimed Lincoln biographer Stephen B. Oates, “the most popular historical interpreter of Lincoln” (Gabor S. Boritt, New York Times Book Review), exposes the human side of the great and tragic president - including his depression, his difficulties with love, and his troubled and troubling attitudes about slavery - while also confronting the many legends that have arisen around “Honest Abe”. Oates throughout raises timely questions about what the Lincoln mythos reveals about the American people.

October 1864. The confederate ironclad CSS Albemarle had sunk two federal warships and damaged seven others, taking control of the Roanoke River and threatening the Union blockade. Twenty-one-year-old navy lieutenant William Barker Cushing hatched a daring plan: to attack the fearsome warship with a few dozen men in two small wooden boats.

The Boy Generals: George Custer, Wesley Merritt, and the Cavalry of the Army of the Potomac is the first installment in a remarkable trilogy to examine the strategy, tactics, and relationships of the leading Union army’s mounted arm and their influence on the course of the Civil War in the Eastern Theater. George Armstrong Custer’s career has attracted its fair share of coverage, but most Custer-related studies focus on his decision-making and actions to the exclusion of other important factors, including his relationships with his fellow officers.

John L. Ransom was taken prisoner in 1863 when his regiment was split into two smaller forces in East Tennessee. He was placed into Andersonville Prison, formerly known as Camp Sumter. Ransom wrote a journal, published in 1881, on his experiences in the camp. Andersonville was the worst of Confederate prison camps, where hundreds of prisoners died daily. Ransom’s diary is important as it provides information on the notorious Andersonville prison camp that may not have been known otherwise.

Once below the Potomac River, the Union troopers raced down the east side of the Blue Ridge Mountains but were unable to prevent General Lee's wounded Army of Northern Virginia from reaching Culpeper. The balance of 1863 was a series of maneuvers, raids, and fighting that witnessed the near-destruction of the Michigan Cavalry Brigade at Buckland Mills and the indecisive and frustrating efforts of the Bristoe Station and Mine Run campaigns. Alfred Pleasonton's controversial command of the mounted arm ended abruptly, only to be replaced by the more controversial Philip H. Sheridan.

As a defender of national unity, a leader in war, and the emancipator of slaves, Abraham Lincoln lays ample claim to being the greatest of our presidents. This extraordinary biography by one of the most highly regarded historians on the subject examines Lincoln both as a rising politician and as president.

Nineteenth-century African Americans felt deep affection for their "liberator" as a "homely" man who did not hold himself apart; Southerners felt a nostalgia for Abraham Lincoln as a humble "conciliator". Later, educators glorified Lincoln as a symbol of nationhood to help assimilate poor immigrants. Monument makers focused not only on a gigantic body but also on a nationalist "union", downplaying "emancipation". Among both Black and White liberals in the 1960s and 1970s, Lincoln was derided or fell out of fashion.

As fresh and poignant today as when they were written, these touching letters capture the heart of everyday life during the Civil War. Set both at home in Florida and on the front, the letters were written by two generations of families whose members included radical secessionists, moderates, and even a few Unionists.

A lot of ink has been spilled covering the lives of history's most influential figures, but how much of the forest is lost for the trees? In Charles River Editors' American Legends series, listeners can get caught up to speed on the lives of America's most important men and women in the time it takes to finish a commute, while learning interesting facts long forgotten or never known.

In Searching for Stonewall Jackson, historian Ben Cleary examines not only Jackson's life, but his own, contemplating what it means to be a white Southerner in the 21st century. Now, as statues commemorating the Civil War are toppled and Confederate flags come down, Cleary walks the famous battlefields, following in the footsteps of his subject as he questions the legacy of Stonewall Jackson and the South's Lost Cause at a time when the contentions of politics, civil rights, and social justice are at a fever pitch.

Abraham Lincoln is the central axis of this story about America's seemingly unstoppable march toward war, the shattering of its political landscape, and its grappling with the moral underpinnings of a republic of the people, by the people, and for the people.

"The real war will never get in the books," Walt Whitman wrote in this diary he kept during the Civil War. Whitman chronicled his visits to Washington, D.C. hospitals where he comforted wounded men and assisted nurses and doctors. This journal, written by one of America's greatest poets and writers, captures the details and ironies of war.

Abraham Lincoln called "Billy" Herndon, “My man always above all other men on the globe". They were business partners for 16 years. After Lincoln's assassination Herndon did interviews with Lincoln's family and friends for this biography. Co-author Jesse Weik also conducted many original interviews. The result - although not without flaws - has been recognized as one of the most important biographies of the Great Emancipator ever published.

Civil War General—B.F. Kelley is the newly released biography of Union Major General B.F. Kelley, written and narrated by the general’s great, great, great grandson T. F. Kelley. General Kelley served as a command officer in the Union Army during the American Civil War from then Colonel Kelley's planning and leading the first land battle of the Civil War at Philippi, then Virginia, in June of 1861—to the Civil War's end in 1865.

Exploration of the early American West, beginning with Lewis and Clark’s transcontinental trek at the behest of President Thomas Jefferson, was not accomplished by standing armies, the era’s new steam train technology, or by way of land grabs. These came later, but not until pathways known only to a few of the land’s indigenous people were discovered, carved out, and charted in an area stretching from the eastern Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Ocean, and the present-day borders of Mexico and Canada.