United States Military History

Captain Kidd has gone down in history as America's most ruthless buccaneer. However, Captain William Kidd was no career cut-throat; he was a tough, successful New York sea captain who was hired to chase pirates. Across the oceans of the world, the pirate hunter, Kidd, pursued the pirate, Culliford. One man would hang in the harbor; the other would walk away with the treasure. The Pirate Hunter is both a masterpiece of historical detective work and a page-turner.

African American Slave Medicine offers a critical examination of how African American slaves' medical needs were addressed during the years before and surrounding the Civil War. Drawing upon ex-slave interviews conducted during the 1930s and 1940s by the Works Project Administration (WPA), Dr. Herbert C. Covey inventories many of the herbal, plant, and non-plant remedies used by African American folk practitioners during slavery.

The half-century before the Civil War was beset with conflict over equality as well as freedom. Beginning in 1803, many free states, claiming the authority to maintain the domestic peace, enacted laws that discouraged free African Americans from settling their boundaries and restricted the rights to testify in court, move freely from place to place, work, vote, and attend public school. But over time, African American activists and their white allies, often facing mob violence, courageously built a movement to fight these racist laws.

A powerful wartime saga in the best-selling tradition of Flags of Our Fathers, Brothers in Arms recounts the extraordinary story of the 761st Tank Battalion, the first all-Black armored unit to see combat in World War II.

There have been numerous books about the why, when, and where of slavery in America, but there is a dearth of material exposing what slavery was actually like. In The Great Stain, researcher Noel Rae frames firsthand accounts from former slaves, slave owners, and even African slavers. Rae exposes the commerce and culture of slavery, not only from an economic or moral standpoint but also through multitudinous perspectives within it: a young girl is beaten after being accused of stealing a piece of candy, a slave ship's surgeon recounts brutal treatment and squalid conditions.

Contrary to movie and legend, we now know that the defenders of the Alamo in the war for Texan independence—including Davy Crockett, Jim Bowie, and William B. Travis—did not die under brilliant sunlight, defending their positions against hordes of Mexican infantry. Instead, the Mexicans launched a predawn attack, surmounting the walls in darkness. In this book, Dr. Tucker informs us that the traditional myth of the Alamo is even more off-base: most of the Alamo’s defenders died in breakouts from the fort, cut down by Santa Anna’s cavalry, positioned to intercept the escapees.

Small though they were, PT boats played a key role in World War II, carrying out an astonishing variety of missions where fast, versatile, and strongly armed vessels were needed. Called "weapons of opportunity", they met the enemy at closer quarters and with greater frequency than any other type of surface craft. Among the most famous PT commanders was John F. Kennedy, whose courageous actions in the Pacific are now well known to the American public.

Americans debating the fate of slavery often invoked the specter of disunion to frighten their opponents. As Elizabeth R. Varon shows, "disunion" connoted the dissolution of the republic - the failure of the founders' effort to establish a stable and lasting representative government. For many Americans in both the North and the South, disunion was a nightmare, a cataclysm that would plunge the nation into the kind of fear and misery that seemed to pervade the rest of the world.

The opening years of the French and Indian War were disastrous for the British. Hindered by quarrelsome provincial councils, incompetent generals, and the redcoats' inability to adapt to wilderness warfare, Britain was losing the war. Learning that most of Britain's military resources were allocated to Louisbourg, the French launched a campaign along the weakened frontier. French Commander Louis-Joseph de Montcalm and his American Indian allies laid siege to Fort William Henry; Monro could not hold out and was forced to surrender.

Seven Virginians, the culmination of a lifetime of erudition by one of America's leading historians, reveals the integral role played by seven major Virginians before, during, and after the American Revolution: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, George Mason, Patrick Henry, and John Marshall.

John McCain’s evocative history of Americans at war, told through the personal accounts of 13 remarkable soldiers who fought in major military conflicts, from the Revolutionary War of 1776 to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Samoa is a group of about 20 islands in the South Pacific Ocean, totaling slightly over 1,100 square miles, about a fifth the size of Hawai’i. The ancestors of the Samoans arrived there many centuries ago. Archaeological artifacts suggest Polynesians arrived perhaps three thousand years before the present, or perhaps even earlier.

The US Marines are a powerful military force. But there is more to these elite fighters than you might imagine. These surprising facts about the US Marine Corps will amaze you.

In The Icarus Syndrome, Peter Beinart tells a tale as old as the Greeks—a story about the seductions of success. Beinart describes Washington on the eve of three wars—World War I, Vietnam, and Iraq—three moments when American leaders decided they could remake the world in their image. Each time, leading intellectuals declared that history was over, and the spread of democracy was inevitable. Each time, a president held the nation in the palm of his hand.

From rockbound coast, from farm and logging camp came the men of the Twentieth Maine, a volunteer regiment in the Civil War. It was at Little Round Top that the Twentieth Maine, with Joshua Chamberlain in command, performed one of the miracles of the Civil War and saved the left flank of the Union battle line.

On the 12th of April 1865, the Army of Northern Virginia marched to the field in front of Appomattox Court-House, stacked their arms, folded their colors, and walked off empty handed to find their distant, blighted homes. These are detailed and moving first-hand accounts from a number of prominent witnesses to Robert E. Lee's surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia at Appomattox.

Roy Adkins, with his wife, Lesley, returns to the Napoleonic War in The War for All the Oceans, a gripping account of the naval struggle that lasted from 1798 to 1815, a period marked at the beginning by Napoleon's seizing power and at the end by the War of 1812. In this vivid and visceral account, Adkins draws on eyewitness records to portray not only the battles but also the details of a sailor's life: shipwrecks, press-gangs, prostitutes, spies, and prisoners of war.

On July 16, 1945, just weeks before the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that brought about the surrender of Japan and the end of WWII, the US unleashed the world's first atomic bomb at the Trinity testing site located in the remote Tularosa Valley in New Mexico. In The First Atomic Bomb Janet Farrell Brodie explores the history of the Trinity test and those whose contributions have rarely been discussed—the men and women who constructed, served, and witnessed the first test—as well as the downwinders who suffered the consequences of radiation.

No other war in the history of the US has sparked as much debate and conflict as the American Civil War. For more than 150 years, the story of the Civil War has been a source of contention, confusion, and even contempt in American life. Explore the deadliest war in American history!

This sweeping biography about the man who was the inspiration for Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin is an epic tale of courage and bravery in the face of unimaginable trials. The Road to Dawn tells the improbable story of Josiah Henson - a dynamic, driven man with exceptional intelligence and unyielding principles, who overcame incredible odds to escape from slavery and improve the lives of hundreds of freedmen throughout his long life. He was immortalized by Harriet Beecher Stowe in her 1852 novel Uncle Tom's Cabin.