American Military History

Hated and hailed, excoriated and revered, Abraham Lincoln was at the pinnacle of American power when secessionists gave no quarter in a clash of visions bound up with money, race, identity, and faith. In him we can see the possibilities of the presidency as well as its limitations. This book tells the story of Lincoln from his birth on the Kentucky frontier to his leadership during the Civil War to his tragic assassination: his rise, his self-education, his loves, his bouts of depression, his political failures, his deepening faith, and his persistent conviction that slavery must end.

A magnificent history of the opening years of the Civil War by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Bruce Catton. The first book in Bruce Catton's Pulitzer Prize-winning Army of the Potomac Trilogy, Mr. Lincoln's Army is a riveting history of the early years of the Civil War, when a fledgling Union Army took its stumbling first steps under the command of the controversial general George McClellan.

In The Cause of All Nations, distinguished historian Don H. Doyle explains that the Civil War was more than an internal American conflict; it was a struggle that spanned the Atlantic Ocean. This audiobook follows the agents of the North and South who went abroad to tell the world what they were fighting for, and the foreign politicians, journalists, and intellectuals who told America and the world what they thought this war was really about - or ought to be about.

The Last Battle concludes Leonard Wibberley’s epic saga of the Treegate family during the War of 1812… Manly Treegate has become captain of the brig Wild Duck in the young United States Navy. He has orders to seize any British shipping sighted in West Indian waters—and he does so with the help of his old friend Gubu, leader of a band of pirates. Among Manly’s crew is young Peter Treegate, who often chafes under the discipline of a captain who happens to be his older brother but who is also determined to follow the family tradition of service. Meanwhile, Major Peter Treegate, uncle ...

The American president has come to be the most powerful figure in the world. And back in the 19th century, a great man held that office. William Lee Miller's new book closely examines that great man in that hugely important office: Abraham Lincoln as president.

Stirringly evocative, thought provoking, and often jaw dropping, The Operator ranges across SEAL Team Operator Robert O'Neill's awe-inspiring 400-mission career that included his involvement in attempts to rescue "Lone Survivor" Marcus Luttrell and abducted-by-Somali-pirates Captain Richard Phillips and culminated in those famous three shots that dispatched the world's most wanted terrorist, Osama bin Laden.

A classic of its kind, The Long Gray Line is the 25-year saga of the West Point class of 1966. With a novelist's eye for detail, Rick Atkinson illuminates this powerful story through the lives of three classmates and the women they loved - from the boisterous cadet years, to the fires of Vietnam, to the hard peace and internal struggles that followed the war.

Rethinking American Grand Strategy assembles a roster of leading historians to examine America's place in the world. Its innovative chapters reexamine familiar figures, such as John Quincy Adams, George Kennan, and Henry Kissinger, while also revealing the forgotten episodes and hidden voices of American grand strategy. They expand the scope of diplomatic and military history by placing the grand strategies of public health, race, gender, humanitarianism, and the law alongside military and diplomatic affairs to reveal hidden strategists as well as strategies.

"Whirligig is a magnificent novel, epic in scale!"– Gill Thompson, Author of 'The Child on Platform One.' Shire leaves his home and his life in Victorian England for the sake of a childhood promise, a promise that pulls him into the bleeding heart of the American Civil War. Lost in the bloody battlefields of the West, he discovers a second home for his loyalty. Clara believes she has escaped from a predictable future of obligation and privilege, but her new life in the Appalachian Hills of Tennessee is decaying around her. In the mansion of Comrie, long hidden secrets are being slowly ...

By the acclaimed author of the classic Patriots and Union 1812, this major work of narrative history portrays four of the most turbulent decades in the growth of the American nation. After the War of 1812, Presidents Monroe, Jackson, Van Buren, and Polk led the country to its Manifest Destiny across the continent, but the forces and hostility unleashed by that expansion led inexorably to Civil War.

Scouting for Grant and Meade is comprised of the popular recollections of Judson Knight, former chief scout of the Army of the Potomac from August 1864 to June 1865. Originally beginning as a serialized column in the armed forces service paper National Tribune, Knight’s column "Fighting Them Over Again" offers a rare glimpse into the comings and goings of scouts behind enemy lines during the American Civil War.

In a world of renewed great power competition, the challenges facing the United States in managing its relations with China and Russia are daunting. But with "A New Cold War Global Strategy," you can get ahead of the curve in understanding this complex conflict. This comprehensive analysis of the relationships among these three global powers draws on insights from history, economics, law, and philosophy to provide a strategic roadmap for the United States. From the resource dependence and demographic constraints of dictatorship to the isolationism and withdrawal of democracy, the book ...

The War to End All Wars is considered by many to be the best single account of America’s participation in World War I. Covering famous battles, the birth of the air force, naval engagements, the War Department, and experiences of the troops, this indispensable volume is suitable for history buffs, students, and general listeners.

In Dreams of El Dorado, H. W. Brands tells the thrilling, panoramic story of the settling of the American West. He takes us from John Jacob Astor's fur trading outpost in Oregon to the Texas Revolution, from the California gold rush to the Oklahoma land rush. He shows how the migrants' dreams drove them to feats of courage and perseverance that put their stay-at-home cousins to shame - and how those same dreams also drove them to outrageous acts of violence against indigenous peoples and one another. El Dorado was at least as elusive in the West as it ever was in the East.

Salmon P. Chase is best remembered as a rival of Lincoln’s for the Republican nomination in 1860—but there would not have been a national Republican Party, and Lincoln could not have won the presidency, were it not for the groundwork Chase laid over the previous two decades. Starting in the early 1840s, long before Lincoln was speaking out against slavery, Chase was forming and leading antislavery parties. He represented fugitive slaves so often in his law practice that he was known as the attorney general for runaway negroes.

Grinding, bloody, and ultimately decisive, the Petersburg Campaign was the Civil War's longest and among its most complex. Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee squared off for more than nine months in their struggle for Petersburg, the key to the Confederate capital at Richmond. Featuring some of the war's most notorious battles, the campaign played out against a backdrop of political drama and crucial fighting elsewhere, with massive costs for soldiers and civilians alike.

The Buffalo Soldiers were the first peacetime all-Black regiment of the US Army. Created around the time of the Civil War, they fought bravely in several wars, and also played an important role in the history of the American West.

In the opening volume of his acclaimed American Revolution series, Nathaniel Philbrick turns his keen eye to pre-Revolutionary Boston and the spark that ignited the American Revolution. In the aftermath of the Boston Tea Party and the violence at Lexington and Concord, the conflict escalated and skirmishes gave way to outright war in the Battle of Bunker Hill. It was the bloodiest conflict of the revolutionary war, and the point of no return for the rebellious colonists.

What happens when you lose your freedom and the people who eventually get it back for you are no longer alive to thank? Set during the horrors of World War II, Remember Us by Robert Edsel—#1 New York Times bestselling author of The Monuments Men—opens in Limburg, a small, rural province at the southern tip of the Netherlands. In the pre-dawn hours of May 10, 1940, Hitler’s forces rolled through the city, shattering more than 100 years of peace in the Netherlands. The country fell one week later. The Dutch lived under German occupation for four-and-a-half years, until September 1944.

Before America joined World War I, a small group of Americans volunteered for the French Foreign Legion to help defeat the Central Powers. Historian David Hanna profiles seven of these volunteers: a poet, an artist, a boxer, a stunt pilot, a college student, a veteran of the Spanish American War, and an advertising executive. All seven men were united in courage; and some, like poet Alan Seeger, paid the ultimate sacrifice.