In this unique series the Civil War comes vividly to life. Here an eyewitness accounts--many available for the first time in decades--by generals, journalist, and ordinary foot soldiers, both blue and gray, who relive the conflict in all its terrible glory. Each volume brings you a human perspective on the war--its most decisive battles, its most remarkable personalities. Gettysburg: Two Eyewitness Accounts is American history at its finest--and a reading experience you wi...

The Battle of Gettysburg is a vivid firsthand account of the most famous battle of the Civil War. Two weeks later, while his memory was fresh and his adrenaline still high, Union lieutenant Frank Haskell—a Medal of Honor recipient—wrote this book, one of the most honest and accurate eyewitness accounts of war ever written.Haskell, an officer in the Army of the Potomac, describes soldiers preparing for and fighting in a battle that—unknown to them—would shape the destiny of...

In the narrative of the Civil War, Edward Porter Alexander has loomed larger in death than in life. Just 25 years old when the war broke out, Porter Alexander had already served as an engineer and officer in the U.S. Army, but the native Georgian resigned his commission in May 1861 and joined the Confederacy after his home state seceded. Porter Alexander spent 1861 as an intelligence officer, and he served as part of a signal guard, but he soon became chief of ordnance for Joseph Johnstons...

With the exception of George Washington, perhaps the most famous and celebrated general in American history is Robert E. Lee (January 19, 1807 October 12, 1870), despite the fact he led the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia against the Union in the Civil War. The son of U.S. Revolutionary War hero Henry "Light Horse Harry" Lee III, a relative of Martha Custis Washington, and a top graduate of West Point, Lee had distinguished himself so well before the Civil War that President Lincoln as...

Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain was a man of many hats, both in battle and in the classroom. Chamberlain is known today for being President of Bowdoin College in Maine and being one of the main heroes of Little Round Top while in command of the 20th Maine on Day 2 at Gettysburg. Chamberlains regiment earned lasting fame on July 2, 1863, holding the extreme left of the Union line at Gettysburg. Chamberlains actions repelling a series of attacks on Little Round Top earned him the Congressional Meda...

The most famous attack of the Civil War was also one of its most flawed and deadly. Having been unable to break the Army of the Potomacs lines on the left and right flank during Day 2 of the Battle of Gettysburg, Lee decided to make a thrust at the center of the Unions line with about 15,000 men spread out over three divisions. Though it is now known as Picketts Charge, named after division commander George Pickett, the assignment for the charge was given to General James Longstreet, whose 1s...

One of the most important, and controversial, Confederate generals during the Civil War was Lieutenant General James Longstreet, Robert E. Lees old warhorse. Longstreet was Lees principal subordinate for most of the war, ably managing a corps in the Army of Northern Virginia. Longstreet was instrumental in Confederate victories at Second Bull Run, Fredericksburg, and Chickamauga, while he was also effective at Antietam and the Battle of the Wilderness, where he was nearly killed by a shot ...

**Winner of the Guggenheim-Lehrman Prize in Military HistoryAn Economist Best Book of the YearA Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Book of the Year**The Battle of Gettysburg has been written about at length and thoroughly dissected in terms of strategic importance, but never before has a book taken readers so close to the experience of the individual soldier.Two-time Lincoln Prize winner Allen C. Guelzo shows us the face, the sights and the sou...

PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER • America's foremost Civil War historian recounts the final year of the Civil War in his final volume of the Army of the Potomac Trilogy.Bruce Catton takes the reader through the battles of the Wilderness, the Bloody Angle, Cold Harbot, the Crater, and on through the horrible months to one moment at Appomattox. Grant, Meade, Sheridan, and Lee vividly come to life in all their failings and triumphs.

A comprehensive history of the Battle of Gettysburg by one of today's leading historians.The greatest of all Civil War campaigns, Gettysburg was the turning point of the turning point in our nation’s history. Volumes have been written about this momentous three-day battle, but recent histories have tended to focus on the particulars rather than the big picture: on the generals or on single days of battle—even on single charges—or on the daily lives of the soldiers....

This fictional re-creation of the battle of Shiloh in April 1862 is a stunning work of imaginative history, from Shelby Foote, beloved historian of the Civil War. Shiloh conveys not only the bloody choreography of Union and Confederate troops through the woods near Pittsburg Landing, Tennessee, but the inner movements of the combatants’ hearts and minds. Through the eyes of officers and illiterate foot soldiers, heroes and cowards, Shiloh creates a dramatic mosaic of a cr...

John Codman Ropes (18361899) was an American military historian and lawyer and was the co-founder of law firm Ropes & Gray. After the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, Ropes turned his attention principally to military history. He ceaselessly assisted with business and personal help and friendship the officers and men of the 20th Massachusetts regiment, in which his brother, Henry Ropes, was killed in action at Gettysburg, and after the war he devoted himself to the collection and elucidatio...