John J. Miller is director of the Dow Journalism Program at Hillsdale College, a writer for National Review, and the host of two book-themed podcasts, The Great Books and The Bookmonger. His books include The Big Scrum: How Teddy Roosevelt Saved Football and Reading Around: Journalism on Authors, Artists, and Ideas. He lives on a dirt road in rural Michigan.
“So you’re the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war,” Abraham Lincoln supposedly said when he met Stowe. The quote may be apocryphal, but it points to a truth about the 1852 novel that shaped American opinions about the cruelty and injustice of slavery. The writing is a bit melodramatic for modern sensibilities, but it’s hard to beat the scene in which the escaped slave Eliza tries to carry her young son across an icy river for freedom on the other side.
"Uncle Tom's Cabin is the most powerful and enduring work of art ever written about American slavery"-Alfred Kazin
"To expose oneself in maturity to Uncle Tom's cabin may...prove a startling experience"-Edmund Wilson
In Uncle Tom's Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe created America's first black literary hero as well as the nation's antecedent protest novel. The novel's vast influence on attitudes towards African American slavery was considered an incitation towards the American Civil War; conjointly, its powerful anti-slavery message resonated with readers around the world at its time of publication.
With unashamed sentimentality and expressions of faith, Harriet Beecher Stowe, in Uncle…
Okay, it’s a collection of stories rather than a novel. Yet no veteran of the Civil War wrote better fiction about the conflict and its terrors than Bierce. An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge is one of America’s greatest short stories: A staple of high-school English courses, it has a twist at the end that's worthy of The Twilight Zone and often inspires an immediate second reading. Chickamauga reveals the horror of war from the perspective of a child. Amid these fictions, What I Saw of Shiloh is Bierce’s nonfiction account of the 1862 battle in Tennessee.
Newspaperman, short-story writer, poet, and satirist, Ambrose Bierce (1842–1914) is one of the most striking and unusual literary figures America has produced. Dubbed "Bitter Bierce" for his vitriolic wit and biting satire, his fame rests largely on a celebrated compilation of barbed epigrams, The Devil's Dictionary, and a book of short stories (Tales of Soldiers and Civilians, 1891). Most of the 16 selections in this volume have been taken from the latter collection. The stories in this edition include: "What I Saw at Shiloh," "A Son of the Gods," "Four Days in Dixie," "One of the Missing," "A Horseman in…
Crane was born more than six years after the end of the Civil War, yet this gifted writer nevertheless produced its quintessential novel. An exponent of “naturalism”—think of it as “realism,” but meaner—Crane describes the plight of Henry Fleming, a private who flees from battle in fear, becomes wracked by guilt, and seeks redemption.
Here is Stephen Crane's masterpiece, The Red Badge of Courage, together with four of his most famous short stories. Outstanding in their portrayal of violent emotion and quiet tension, these texts led the way for great American writers such as Ernest Hemingway.
Catton was one of the Civil War’s great historians, best known for bringing the stories of individual soldiers into otherwise sweeping accounts of the American Iliad. Amid this work, he also wrote this little-known short novel, published in 1955, which today probably would be filed in the “young adult” section of your favorite bookstore. It tells the tale of Bob Hayden, a Michigan boy who lies about his age to join a volunteer company and rises to manhood while serving in Virginia with Gen. “Fighting Phil” Sheridan.
In the first century, Rome’s celebrated love poet Ovid finds himself in exile, courtesy of an irate Emperor, in the far-flung town of Tomis. Appalled at being banished to a barbarous region at the very edge of the Empire, Ovid soon discovers that he has a far more urgent -…
When I visited the Gettysburg Battlefield for the first time, I mentioned an interest in seeing where Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain had fought. “There’s more to Gettysburg than Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain,” sniffed the tour guide, who apparently had become tired of hearing people like me talk up the heroism Union colonel—a story many of us had learned from the pages of this 1974 novel, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. The Killer Angels is an engrossing book and, despite the misgivings of my tour guide, remains one of the best ways to learn about the men and the motives behind three tide-turning days in 1863.
“My favorite historical novel . . . a superb re-creation of the Battle of Gettysburg, but its real importance is its insight into what the war was about, and what it meant.”—James M. McPherson
In the four most bloody and courageous days of our nation’s history, two armies fought for two conflicting dreams. One dreamed of freedom, the other of a way of life. Far more than rifles and bullets were carried into battle. There were memories. There were promises. There was love. And far more than men fell on those Pennsylvania fields. Bright futures, untested innocence, and pristine beauty…
As the United States teeters on the brink of Civil War and death threats pour into the White House, Col. Charles P. Rook takes on the responsibility of presidential protection. Meanwhile, a mysterious killer hired by a secessionist leader slips into Washington, D.C., seeking to murder Abraham Lincoln. As the bodies pile up, Rook realizes that he’s caught in a dangerous game with a cold-blooded killer who will stop at nothing to complete his mission. His best hope is Portia, a runaway slave who holds the key to the assassin’s identity—if only she can stay alive long enough to deliver it. Packed with dynamic characters, rich period detail, and a sinister villain, The First Assassin is a riveting thriller for fans of historical fiction. Praise from Vince Flynn: “An excellent book—it’s like The Day of the Jackal, set in 1861 Washington.”
This is a multicultural epic fantasy with a diverse cast of characters. Sickly fifteen-year-old Prince Psal, the son of warrior-king Nahas, should have been named Crown Prince of all Wheel Clan lands. But his clan disdains the disabled.
When the mysterious self-moving towers that keep humans safe from the Creator's…
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan. The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced, it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run the…
