Award-winning author Scott Thybony recounts the dramatic events of a war which re-shaped the nation. His essays trace the year-by-year unfolding of the conflict, followed by accounts of the legendary battles and the tragic struggles which changed forever the lives of those who fought them.From John Brown's desperate raid on Harper's Ferry to the reuniting of a nation at Appomattox Court House, the essays and historic photographs cover the major battlefield parks and introduce the l...

In Navajo country, where the land is thick with legends and forgotten histories, a writer sets out to find a place that no longer exists except on a few old maps: Burntwater. The story opens when two friends get stuck in a remote pocket of the desert as a winter storm moves in. They are taking a wandering route across the Four Corners region, curving through Utah, New Mexico, and Arizona on a long arc into the mythic heart of the country. As they travel, the author calls u...

In 1935, during the wind-swept years of the Dust Bowl, three people went missing on separate occasions in the rugged canyon country of southeastern Utah, a place “wild, desolate, mysterious.” A thirteen-year old girl, Lucy Garrett, was tricked into heading west with the man who had murdered her father under the pretense of reuniting with him. At the same time, a search was underway for Dan Thrapp, a young scientist on leave from the American Museum of Natural History. Others were scouring ...

Most people who are familiar with the Painted Desert of northeastern Arizona know it only from having pulled off at the Petrified Forest exit on Interstate 40. If they happen to come by it at midday, as most do, they find a landscape drained of color and flattened under the direct sunlight.But this remote pocket of the Arizona desert, sandwiched between the Little Colorado River on one side and bold escarpments on the other, is much more than most tourists ever experience. An ether...

James M. McPherson, the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Battle Cry of Freedom, and arguably the finest Civil War historian in the world, walks us through the site of the bloodiest and perhaps most consequential battle ever fought by Americans: the Battle of Gettysburg.The events that occurred at Gettysburg are etched into our collective memory, as they served to change the course of the Civil War and with it the course of history. More than any other plac...

With hundreds of entries, as well as photographs, drawings, and a handy time line of events, Civil War, A to Z encompasses everything about this historic conflict . . . from Appomattox to Zouaves.This encyclopedic illustrated reference features facts both familiar and engagingly new, organized in an easy-to-follow alphabetical format. Ranging from the basic to the bizarre, from secession to spies to all kinds of swords, Civil War, A to Z creates a complete picture...

TRAVEL THROUGH A PIVOTAL TIME IN AMERICAN HISTORYJeff Shaara, America’s premier Civil War novelist, gives a remarkable guided tour of the ten Civil War battlefields every American should visit: Shiloh, Antietam, Fredericksburg/Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, Vicksburg, New Market, Chickamauga, the Wilderness/Spotsylvania, Cold Harbor, and Petersburg/Appomattox. Shaara explores the history, the people, and the places that capture the true meaning and magnitude of the conflict and prov...

Few historians have ever captured the drama, excitement, and tragedy of the Civil War with the headlong elan of Edwin Bearss, who has won a huge, devoted following with his extraordinary battlefield tours and eloquent soliloquies about the heroes, scoundrels, and little-known moments of a conflict that still fascinates America. Antietam, Shiloh, Gettysburg: these hallowed battles and more than a dozen more come alive as never before, rich with human interest and colorful detail culled from...

It's a poignant irony in American history that on Independence Day, 1863, not one but two pivotal Civil War battles ended in Union victory, marked the high tide of Confederate military fortune, and ultimately doomed the South's effort at secession. But on July 4, 1863, after six months of siege, Ulysses Grant's Union army finally took Vicksburg and the Confederate west. On the very same day, Robert E. Lee was in Pennsylvania, parrying the threat to Vicksburg with a daring push north to Get...

"Four score and seven years ago..." begins Abraham Lincoln's beautiful speech commemorating the three-day battle that turned the tide of the Civil War. The South had been winning up to this point. So how did Union troops stop General Robert E. Lee's invasion of the North? With black-and-illustrations throughout and sixteen pages of photos, this turning point in history is brought vividly to life.

A gripping narrative of one of the Civil War's most consequential engagements.In the spring of 1864, the newly installed Union commander Ulysses S. Grant did something none of his predecessors had done before: He threw his army against the wily, audacious Robert E. Lee and his Army of Northern Virginia over and over again.At Spotsylvania Court House, the two armies shifted from stalemate in the Wilderness to slugfest in the mud. Most commonly known for the ...

This Civil War history and guide offers a vivid chronicle of this dramatic yet misunderstood battle, plus invaluable information for battlefield visitors.The battle of Fredericksburg is usually remembered as the most lopsided Union defeat of the Civil War. It is sometimes called "Burnside's folly," after Union commander Maj. Gen. Ambrose Burnside who led the Army of the Potomac to ruin along the banks of the Rappahannock River. Confederates, fortified behind a stone...