**The first volume in a four-volume series on the American Civil War—featuring first-hand writings from Ulysses S. Grant, Robert E. Lee, Abraham Lincoln, and moreThis “mesmerizing and deeply troubling” glimpse into the Civil War era “will forever deepen the way you see this central chapter in our history . . . a masterpiece” (Newsweek).**After 150 years the Civil War is still our greatest national drama, at once heroic, tragic, and epic-our Iliad, but also our Bibl...

Today's protracted asymmetrical conflicts confuse efforts to measure progress, often inviting politics and wishful thinking to replace objective evaluation.In Assessing War, military historians, social scientists, and military officers explore how observers have analyzed the trajectory of war in American conflicts from the Seven Years’ War through the war in Afghanistan. Drawing on decades of acquired expertise, the contributors examine wartime assessment in both theory and practic...

The aftermath of the Civil War comes to dramatic life in this sweeping new collection of firsthand writing from the Reconstruction era—featuring pieces by Frederick Douglass, Frances Harper, and more“Very, very good. . . . Reconstruction conveys the struggle for racial equality better than many other anthologies documenting the era.” —The Wall Street JournalFew periods in American history are more consequential but less un...

"The best study of Grant's military career since Bruce Catton's two volumes. . . . The best treatment of Union military command and strategy now in print." — The New RepublicMany modern historians have painted Ulysses S. Grant as a butcher, a drunk, and a failure as president. Others have argued the exact opposite and portray him with saintlike levels of ethic and intellect.In Ulysses S. Grant: Triumph over Adversity 1822–1865, historian Bro...

The first major modern edition of the wartime correspondence of General William T. Sherman, this volume features more than 400 letters written between the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860 and the day Sherman bade farewell to his troops in 1865. Together, they trace Sherman’s rise from obscurity to become one of the Union’s most famous and effective warriors.Arranged chronologically and grouped into chapters that correspond to significant phases in Sherman’s life, the letters — ma...

This book fills a gap in Civil War literature on the strategies employed by the Union and Confederacy in the East, offering a more integrated interpretation of military operations that shows how politics, public perception, geography, and logistics shaped the course of military operations in the East.For all the literature about Civil War military operations and leadership, precious little has been written about strategy, particularly in what has become known as th...

Few American Civil War operations matched the controversy, intensity, and bloodshed of Confederate general John Bell Hood’s ill-fated 1864 campaign against Union forces in Tennessee. In the first-ever anthology on the subject, The Tennessee Campaign of 1864, edited by Steven E. Woodworth and Charles D. Grear, fourteen prominent historians and emerging scholars examine the three-month operation, covering the battles of Allatoona, Spring Hill, and Franklin, as well as the decimation...

Little Round Top, the Railroad Cut, Pickett’s Charge—these are the turning points within the most important battle of the Civil War. Even careful students of Gettysburg, however, can find themselves disoriented when visiting the site itself. Here, finally, is a convenient guide for serious student and casual visitor alike that makes plain the sweep of events and the geography of the battlefield.This invaluable guidebook was created by scholars who have walked the battlegrounds, con...

The outcomes of campaigns in the Civil War often depended on top generals having the right corps commanders in the right place at the right time. Mutual trust and respect between generals and their corps commanders, though vital to military success, was all too rare: Corps commanders were often forced to exercise considerable discretion in the execution of orders from their generals, and bitter public arguments over commanders' performances in battle followed hard on the heels of many majo...

This third volume of the ground-breaking eyewitness narrative that has been called a “masterpiece” traces events from January 1863 to March 1864—a crucial period in the American Civil WarSpanning 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 Unio...

Historians have traditionally drawn distinctions between Ulysses S. Grant’s military and political careers. In Let Us Have Peace, Brooks Simpson questions such distinctions and offers a new understanding of this often enigmatic leader. He argues that during the 1860s Grant was both soldier and politician, for military and civil policy were inevitably intertwined during the Civil War and Reconstruction era. According to Simpson, Grant instinctively understood that war was 'politics...

Household War restores the centrality of households to the American Civil War. The essays in the volume complicate the standard distinctions between battlefront and homefront, soldier and civilian, and men and women. From this vantage point, they look at the interplay of family and politics, studying the ways in which the Civil War shaped and was shaped by the American household. They explore how households influenced Confederate and Union military strategy, the motivations of sol...