Civil War Military History

This sweeping history of the Civil War and the Confederacy is told through the lens of its most crucial army: the Army of Northern Virginia, commanded by Robert E. Lee. General Lee's Army takes listeners across the Rebel landscape, from campfires to battlefields to their homes, as it portrays a world of life, death, healing, and hardship.

Before 1862, Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain had rarely left his home state of Maine, where he was a trained minister and mild-mannered professor at Bowdoin College. His colleagues were shocked when he volunteered for the Union army, but he was undeterred and later became known as one of the North’s greatest heroes: On the second day at Gettysburg, after running out of ammunition at Little Round Top, he ordered his men to wield their bayonets in a desperate charge down a rocky slope that routed the Confederate attackers.

This prize-winning and critically acclaimed history uses foreign relations as the lens through which to tell the story of America's dramatic rise from 13 disparate colonies huddled along the Atlantic coast to the world's greatest superpower.

Confederate John Singleton Mosby forged his reputation on the most exhilarating of military activities: the overnight raid. Mosby possessed a genius for guerrilla and psychological warfare, taking control of the dark to make himself the "Gray Ghost" of Union nightmares. Gray Ghost, the first full biography of Confederate raider John Mosby, reveals new information on every aspect of Mosby's life, providing the first analysis of his impact on the Civil War from the Union viewpoint.

Champagne Charlie tells the story of a dashing young Frenchman, Charles Heidsieck, who introduced hard-drinking Americans to champagne in the mid-19th century and became famously known as Champagne Charlie. Ignoring critics who warned that America was a dangerous place to do business, Heidsieck plunged right in, considering it "the land of opportunity" and succeeding there beyond his wildest dreams. Those dreams, however, became a nightmare when the Civil War erupted and he was imprisoned and nearly executed after being charged with spying for the Confederacy.

John McCorkle was a young Missouri farmer of Southern sympathies. After serving briefly in the pro-Confederate Missouri State Guard, he became a prominent member of William Clarke Quantrill's infamous guerrillas, who took advantage of the turmoil in the Missouri-Kansas borderland to prey on pro-Union people. McCorkle displayed an unflinchingly violent nature while he participated in raids and engagements including the massacres at Lawrence and Baxter Springs, Kansas; and Centralia, Missouri.

In 1993, Jacqueline Tobin visited the Old Market Building in the historic district of Charleston, South Carolina, where craftspeople sell their wares. Amid piles of beautiful handmade quilts, Tobin met African American quilter Ozella Williams and the two struck up a conversation. With the admonition to "write this down," Williams began to tell a fascinating story that had been handed down from her mother and grandmother before her. As Tobin sat in rapt attention, Williams began to describe how slaves made coded quilts and then used them to navigate their escape on the Underground Railroad.

A sweeping narrative that remakes our understanding of perhaps the most consequential period in American history, The Rise and Fall of the Second American Republic shows how the great contest of that age is also the great contest of our age—and serves as a necessary reminder of how young and fragile our democracy truly is.

A Tempest of Iron and Lead: Spotsylvania Court House, May 8–21, 1864 is a comprehensive and comprehensible study of this endlessly fascinating campaign. Author Chris Mackowski is intimately familiar with the battle of Spotsylvania Court House.

Sergeant Charles Windolph was the last white survivor of the Battle of Little Big Horn when he told his story nearly 70 years later. A six-year veteran in the Seventh Cavalry, Windolph rode in the 1873 Yellowstone Expedition, and the 1874 Black Hills Expedition. He fought in Captain Benteen's troops on the fatal Sunday, and vividly recalls the battle that wiped out Custer's command. Equally vivid is the evidence marshaled by historians Frazier and Robert Hunt.

We view the long, horrifying struggle from the vantage of the White House as Lincoln copes with incompetent generals, hostile congressmen, and his raucous cabinet. He overcomes these obstacles by winning the respect of his former competitors, and in the case of Seward, finds a loyal and crucial friend to see him through. This brilliant multiple biography is centered on Lincoln's mastery of men and how it shaped the most significant presidency in the nation's history.

Appian's Civil Wars offers a comprehensive account of the unstable epoch from the time of Tiberius Gracchus (133 BC) to the great conflicts which followed the murder of Julius Caesar. For the events between 133 and 70 BC Appian is the only constant surviving narrative source, making his diaries an invaluable source to understand this brutal and formative moment in history.

How did Civil War soldiers endure the brutal and unpredictable existence of army life during the conflict? This question is at the heart of Peter S. Carmichael's sweeping new study of men at war.

A major new biography of the Civil War general and American president, by the author of the New York Times bestseller A. Lincoln. The dramatic story of one of America's greatest and most misunderstood military leaders and presidents, this is a major new interpretation of Ulysses S. Grant. Based on seven years of research with primary documents, some of them never tapped before, this is destined to become the Grant biography of our times.

The assassination of Abraham Lincoln is usually told as a tale of a lone deranged actor who struck from a twisted lust for revenge. This is not only too simple an explanation; Blood on the Moon reveals that it is completely wrong. John Wilkes Booth was neither mad nor alone in his act of murder. He received the help of many, not the least of whom was Dr. Samuel Alexander Mudd, the Charles County physician who has been portrayed as the innocent victim of a vengeful government.

A rousing and meticulously researched account of the notorious Battle of Little Big Horn and its unforgettable cast of characters from Sitting Bull to Custer himself.

Throughout the 1850s, the issues of slavery and states' rights had divided the nation. With the election of 1860, these issues finally came to a head, setting the stage for the American Civil War. Compelling, action-packed text, vivid sensory details, and primary source quotes bring the story to life so that listeners feel as if they were actually alive during the historical event.

The Grimke sisters, Sarah and Angelina, have been highly revered figures in American history, lauded for leaving behind their lives as elite slave-owning women on a plantation in South Carolina to become firebrand abolitionists in the North. Yet the focus on their story has obscured the experiences of their Black relatives, the progeny of their brother, Henry, and one of the enslaved people he owned, a woman named Nancy Weston.

Though he barely escaped expulsion from West Point, John Bell Hood quickly rose through the ranks of the Confederate army. With bold leadership in the battles of Gaines' Mill and Antietam, Hood won favor with Confederate president Jefferson Davis. But his fortunes in war took a tragic turn when he assumed command of the Confederate Army of Tennessee. After the fall of Atlanta, Hood marched his troops north in an attempt to draw Union army general William T. Sherman from his devastating "March to the Sea." But the ploy proved ruinous for the South.

With absorbing power, Emory M. Thomas tells the story of one of the most revered figures in American history. A story of triumph and tragedy, this stunning biography provides a fascinating glimpse at the man behind the Civil War legend. Revealing the "whole" Lee in this enthralling, detailed saga, Thomas portrays him as a man driven by the paradoxes in his own personality. Here is the Lee who is both a legend and a man. Heroic and larger than life in battle; insecure and unfulfilled in private life.