Succinct, with a brace of original documents following each chapter, Christopher J. Olsen's The American Civil War is the ideal introduction to American history's most famous, and infamous, chapter. Covering events from 1850 and the mounting political pressures to split the Union into opposing sections, through the four years of bloodshed and waning Confederate fortunes, to Lincoln's assassination and the advent of Reconstruction. The American Civil...

"In his Second Inaugural Address, Abraham Lincoln said both North and South "read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other." Lincoln quoted several biblical texts in this address - which, according to Frederick Douglass, "sounded more like a sermon than a state paper." The Bible, as Lincoln's famous speech illustrated, saturated the Civil War. In this book, James Byrd offers the most thorough analysis yet...

Joshua L. Chamberlain of Maine was an academic and theologian by training, but he led his regiment to glory at Gettysburg, where he ordered the brilliant charge that avoided a Union catastrophe. He was held in such high esteem by his superiors that Grant accorded him the honor of receiving the formal Confederate surrender at Appomattox.

The first full-scale biography of the "father of the atomic bomb," the brilliant, charismatic physicist who led the effort to capture the fire of the sun for his country in time of war. After Hiroshima, he became the most famous scientist of his generation--an icon of modern man confronting the consequences of scientific progress. He created a radical proposal to place international controls over atomic materials, opposed the development of the hydrogen...

"This is a war story. It's about real people and events before and during the American Revolution. The central characters in this work, Daniel Morgan, George Washington, Patrick Henry, Charles Mynn Thruston, and Generals Arnold, Knox, Greene, Lee, Gates, and a host of others, actually did the deeds at the places and times described herein. So too did their accurately identified foreign and native adversaries. Though this is a work of fiction, readers...

"This ... young adult adaptation brings her ideas to a new audience. When America achieves milestones of progress toward full and equal black participation in democracy, the systemic response is a consistent racist backlash that rolls back those wins. We Are Not Yet Equal examines five of these moments: The end of the Civil War and Reconstruction was greeted with Jim Crow laws; the promise of new opportunities in the North during the Great Migration...

History has been kind to Robert E. Lee, but immediately after the Civil War many northerners believed Lee should be hanged for treason and war crimes. In June of 1865 Robert E. Lee was indicted for treason by a Norfolk, Virginia grand jury. Reeves tells the story of the forgotten legal and moral case that was made against the Confederate general after the Civil War. The actual indictment went missing for 72 years, and has both literally and figuratively...

Slave narratives are extremely rare, with only 55 post-Civil War narratives surviving. A mere handful are first-person accounts by slaves who ran away and freed themselves. Now two newly uncovered narratives join that exclusive group. Handed down through family and friends, they tell gripping stories of escape: Through a combination of intelligence, daring, and sheer luck, the men reached the protection of occupying Union troops. Historian Blight...

"I am seeking to rescue the poor stockinger, the Luddite cropper, the "obsolete" hand-loom weaver, the "utopian" artisan, and even the deluded . . . from the enormous condescension of posterity. Their crafts and traditions may have been dying. Their hostility to the new industrialism may have been backward-looking. Their communitarian ideals may have been fantasies. Their insurrectionary conspiracies may have been foolhardy. But they lived through...

"Few American institutions have inflicted greater suffering on ordinary people than the Supreme Court of the United States. In this powerful indictment of a venerated institution, constitutional law expert Ian Millhiser tells the history of the Supreme Court through the eyes of everyday people who have suffered the most as a result of its judgements. The justices built a nation where children toiled in coal mines and cotton mills, where Americans...