In Blood, the Civil War, the most dramatic moment in this nation's history, also produced some of our greatest literature. From tragic charges to prison escapes to the desolation wrought on those who stayed behind, Blood is an extraordinary collection of reminiscences, fiction, and excerpts from diaries and letters by an array of soldiers, writers and observers that includes Abraham Lincoln, General George Pickett, Walt Whitman, Ulysses S. Grant and Stephen Crane. In The War, no one knew i...

John Valliant's essay about the sinking of the Fantome, a Caribbean pleasure cruiser during Hurricane Mitch in 1998, and the subsequent lawsuit. The disaster was the Atlantic’s worst sailing accident in over forty years. This selection is part of the full length audiobook, "Storm: Stories of Survival From Land and Sea."

"In Consequences I," Kesselheim recalls how when things sometimes go wrong, the key players have to make an immediate decisions. In 1979, Kesselheim and companions were involved in a canoe capcize in the frigid lake waters of northern Quebec when he was thrust into the role of rescuer. In "Consequences II," the story is told from the perspective of one of the capcized paddlers. This selection is part of the full length audiobook, "Rescue: Stories of Survival From Land and Sea."

In this essay, Muir tells his experience of climbing to the top of a tree and riding it for hours through a wild Sierra storm. As he writes, “the danger to life and limb is hardly greater than one would experience crouching deprecatingly beneath a roof.” This selection is part of the full length audiobook, "Storm: Stories of Survival From Land and Sea."