I am the author of The Lost Indictment of Robert E. Lee and A Fire in the Wilderness: The First Battle Between Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee. I’ve been a teacher, editor, and writer for over twenty-five years. The Civil War, in particular, has been my passion since I first read Bruce Catton’s The American Heritage Picture History of the Civil War as an elementary school student in the 1960s. My articles on Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant have been featured in The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and on the History News Network.
Alan Nolan became one of the first to challenge the Lee myth that had been created in the decades after the general’s death in 1870. He starts with the premise that Lee was a good man whose actions have been distorted beyond all recognition. He then subjects the historical record to a withering cross-examination. Nolan asks: Why did Lee commit treason? Did he really oppose slavery? Did his stubborn persistence harm his beloved state of Virginia? What did he do to unite the nation after the war? Nolan even challenges to the traditional belief that Lee was magnanimous to his enemies, writing, “The historical record shows that Lee constructed a demonic image of the Federals.” This book takes no quarter and may infuriate Lee’s supporters.
In a careful re-examination of the historical evidence, Alan Nolan explodes many long-standing myths about Robert E. Lee and the American Civil War. The book may change readers' perceptions of the South's premier icon, as Nolan separates the Lee of reality from the Lee of mythology. The book should be of interest to general readers as well as Civil War buffs.
I grew up near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and was fascinated by American history. My initial fascination with the history of the Civil War in the Harrisburg area turned into my first book and the start of my career as a historian of the Underground Railroad and the Civil War. This list reflects my early interest in the lesser-known aspects of the famous Gettysburg Campaign by recommending books that expand our scope beyond the three-day battle.
Confederate soldiers spent much of their brief time in the Keystone State antagonizing Pennsylvania civilians.
I find Wynstra’s book particularly powerful because he shows how senior Confederate generals struggled to rein in their enlisted men’s overwhelming desire for revenge. Furious over what they perceived as Northern abuses on the Southern homefront, rank-and-file Confederates wanted Northern civilians to feel the brunt of the war.
As Wynstra also shows, African American civilians fared far worse than their white counterparts. Confederate soldiers, furious over years of Underground Railroad activity, seized free Blacks and carried them back south into enslavement.
After clearing Virginia's Shenandoah Valley of Federal troops, Gen. Robert E. Lee's bold invasion into the North reached the Maryland shore of the Potomac River on June 15, 1863. A week later, the Confederate infantry crossed into lower Pennsylvania, where they had their first sustained interactions with the civilian population in a solidly pro-Union state. Most of the initial encounters with the people in the lush Cumberland Valley and the neighboring parts of the state involved the men from the Army of Northern Virginia's famed Second Corps, commanded by Lt. Gen. Richard S. Ewell, who led the way as Lee's…
As a child my grandmother shared that we had ancestors who had served during the Civil War, a momentary conversation that set me on a lifetime quest to connect with those men and their experiences. My professional work as a historian and military analyst for the US Government helped build the skills that enabled this quest and each of my books, articles, and videos seek to understand and share both the “what” of those experiences and the “why” of the war’s many battles and conflicts.
Murfin’s readable classic account of the battle takes readers deeper into the military movements and fighting action. His detailed maps further enrich readers’ understanding of the “who” and the “how” of Antietam’s battle. Adding considerable numbers of personal soldier stories, Murfin’s work takes readers closer to understanding the common soldier’s experience, while tying those experiences to the larger objectives of senior military officers. Although his analysis generally reflects an earlier era, knowing how the battle was understood during the Civil War’s centennial provides context for most current interpretations of America’s bloodiest day.
One of the bloodiest days in American military history, the Battle of Antietam turned the tide of the Civil War in favor of the North and delivered the first major defeat to Robert E. Lee's army. In The Gleam of Bayonets, James V. Murfin gives a compelling account of the events and personalities involved in this momentous battle. The gentleness and patience of Lincoln, the vacillations of McClellan, and the grandeur of Lee- all unfold before the reader. The battle itself is presented with precision and scope as Murfin blends together atmosphere and fact, emotions and tactics, into a dramatic…
I have been reading, researching, writing, and teaching Civil War military history for nearly thirty years. I first became interested in soldiers and their experiences as a teen, and went on to earn a PhD in American History at the University of Georgia. I’ve always been fascinated by the anti-hero, and the ways in which everyday people coped (or failed to cope) with this violent conflict. I am currently writing a book about regiments accused of cowardice and how those searing allegations cast a shadow over their military record. From 2010-2015, I served as editor of the scholarly journal Civil War History, and I was recently elected President of the Society for Civil War Historians (2022-2024).
Ural tackles a unit history, but this time a brigade and one of the most famous ones: Hood’s Texans. She showcases not just why and how they became renowned for their fighting effectiveness, but how these men—white southerners—were unapologetic in their support of slavery and the Confederacy. It is “new military history” at its best—combining astute military analysis with social and cultural understandings of the people and the times in which they lived.
One of the most effective units to fight on either side of the Civil War, the Texas Brigade of the Army of Northern Virginia served under Robert E. Lee from the Seven Days Battles in 1862 to the surrender at Appomattox in 1865. In Hood's Texas Brigade, Susannah J. Ural presents a nontraditional unit history that traces the experiences of these soldiers and their families to gauge the war's effect on them and to understand their role in the white South's struggle for independence.
According to Ural, several factors contributed to the Texas Brigade's extraordinary success: the unit's strong self-identity…
I’ve written ten books, four of them prize-winning best sellers, but this is my first book on the Civil War. Fortunately, it’s been generously received. The Wall Street Journal declared it “an epic story” and “rattling good history,” while Pulitzer Prize-winning James M. McPherson declared it “the fullest and best history of the Vicksburg campaign.“ Another Pulitzer receipient, David Blight, praised it for its “sizzling and persuasive prose. Miller has found the way,” he said, “to write both military and emancipation history in one profound package.”
The war’s greatest military historian takes on its greatest military figure in Bruce Catton’s spirited two-volume classic: Grant Moves South and Grant Takes Command. Written decades ago, these paired volumes remain the finest historical account of Grant’s triumphant Civil War career. In the opening volume, we meet the recently minted brigadier in September 1861 as he prepares to join his army at desolate Cairo, Illinois, having just recovered from a succession of crushing personal failures. In the concluding volume, we leave him at Petersburg Virginia in April 1865, after he demolishes R. E. Lee’s army in the climactic battle of the war. Wannabe revisionists think Catton is outdated. Don’t believe them.
This is the first part of the military biography of Ulysses S. Grant and follows Grant from the summer of 1861 when he takes on his first Civil War command through battles at Belmont, Fort Donelson, Shiloh, Corinth and Vicksburg to the summer of 1863. The author has used letters, diaries and despatches in order to provide a rounded picture of this general's personality. "Grant Takes Command" forms the second part of this biography.
I am the author of The Lost Indictment of Robert E. Lee and A Fire in the Wilderness: The First Battle Between Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee. I’ve been a teacher, editor, and writer for over twenty-five years. The Civil War, in particular, has been my passion since I first read Bruce Catton’s The American Heritage Picture History of the Civil War as an elementary school student in the 1960s. My articles on Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant have been featured in The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and on the History News Network.
This book remains the best one-volume biography of Robert E. Lee almost twenty-five years after its publication. Thomas is far more balanced than either Lee’s critics or devotees. Early on, he offers fascinating material about Lee’s parents and private life in general. His discussion of Lee’s father, Light-Horse Harry Lee, is particularly riveting. Despite being born into one of Virginia’s leading families, young Robert E. Lee grew up in an insecure environment after losing his father at a young age. Throughout the book, Thomas provides concise, though somewhat limited, summaries of Lee’s military exploits.
The life of Robert E. Lee is a story not of defeat but of triumph-triumph in clearing his family name, triumph in marrying properly, triumph over the mighty Mississippi in his work as an engineer, and triumph over all other military men to become the towering figure who commanded the Confederate army in the American Civil War. But late in life Lee confessed that he "was always wanting something."
In this probing and personal biography, Emory Thomas reveals more than the man himself did. Robert E. Lee has been, and continues to be, a symbol and hero in the American…
I grew up near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and was fascinated by American history. My initial fascination with the history of the Civil War in the Harrisburg area turned into my first book and the start of my career as a historian of the Underground Railroad and the Civil War. This list reflects my early interest in the lesser-known aspects of the famous Gettysburg Campaign by recommending books that expand our scope beyond the three-day battle.
Kent Masterson Brown takes something that is often relegated to an afterthought—that the defeated Confederate army slipped back into Virginia—and reveals how it profoundly shaped the course of the war.
Brown shows us that for defeated General Robert E. Lee, extricating the Confederate army from Pennsylvania was no simple task. The Confederate army may have lost the battle, but after reading Brown’s book, one could argue that it won the retreat.
Brown concludes that even though the battle of Gettysburg was a defeat for the Army of Northern Virginia, Lee's successful retreat maintained the balance of power in the eastern theater and left his army with enough forage, stores, and fresh meat to ensure its continued existence as an effective force.
Chernow completely reversed my impressions of Grant. Yes, he struggled with a drinking problem and unfortunately he is known for that and a less than brilliant presidency. But U.S. Grant probably did more for African Americans than any other President, except for Lincoln and Johnson. It is said that when someone complained to Lincoln about Grant’s drinking during the civil war, the president responded, “Find out what he drinks. I want to send a barrel to my other generals.”
The #1 New York Times bestseller and New York Times Book Review 10 Best Books of 2017
"Eminently readable but thick with import . . . Grant hits like a Mack truck of knowledge." -Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Atlantic
Pulitzer Prize winner Ron Chernow returns with a sweeping and dramatic portrait of one of our most compelling generals and presidents, Ulysses S. Grant.
Ulysses S. Grant's life has typically been misunderstood. All too often he is caricatured as a chronic loser and an inept businessman, or as the triumphant but brutal Union general of the Civil War. But these stereotypes don't…
When I was a boy, my mother told me every day, “Be a leader.” By that, she meant to remember who you are, stand up for what you believe, do good, and be good. I was only five years old. That daily lesson on the doorstep sunk deep in my heart. For over forty years, I have had a passion for learning, teaching, and practicing small “L” leadership. I have done that as dean of Harvard Business School, president of BYU-Idaho, and Commissioner of Education for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I have learned deeply from the books on this list, and I hope you will, too.
I love this historical novel (set in the battle of Gettysburg during the Civil War) so much that I have read it several times. Each time, it is a sleep robber; it is really hard for me to put it down. It is beautifully written, but it is hard to put down because I find beautiful nuggets of gold about leadership with a small “L” every time I read it.
My favorite character is Joshua Chamberlain, an obscure colonel who led a regiment of Maine volunteers. He has power, but he does not use it to coerce or dominate his troops. He uses it to activate the power that is in them! And they do incredible things at a critical point in the battle.
“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…
My fascination with pirates began as a student in Bristol (UK) – the legendary hometown of Edward Teach a.k.a. Blackbeard. Later, I visited the Pirates of Nassau Museum in the Bahamas and was amazed to learn there had been women buccaneers too. I wanted to discover more about these daring females and find out what might have enticed them to brave a tenuous life on the account. As fate would have it, I now live in North Carolina near the Outer Banks where Blackbeard met his fate. These experiences inspired me to write a different kind of adventure story about the real pirates of the Caribbean featuring a strong, resilient, swashbuckling female.
Lee’s reappraisal of Blackbeard (Edward Teach) examines the mythical persona of arguably the most notorious pirate of The Golden Age. But what is the truth behind the real man? In studying most of the extant evidence Lee displays a certain amount of respect for Blackbeard’s bravery, planning, psychological warfare tactics, and appetite for women, describing him as the “famous knight of the black flag.” This intriguing book offers an alternative view to Blackbeard the Monster.
Edward Teach, better known as Blackbeard, was one of the most notorious pirates ever to plague the Atlantic coast. He was also one of the most colorful pirates of all time, becoming the model for countless blood-and-thunder tales of sea rovers. His daring exploits, personal courage, terrifying appearance, and fourteen wives made him a legend in his own lifetime. The legends and myths about Blackbeard have become wilder rather than tamer in the 250 years since his gory but valiant death at Ocracoke Inlet. It is difficult for historians, and all but impossible for the general reader, to separate fact…
