Filled with fresh interpretations and information, puncturing old myths and challenging new ones, this fast-paced narrative fully integrates the political, social, and military events that crowded the two decades from the outbreak of one war in Mexico to the ending of another at Appomattox. Packed with drama and analytical insight, the book vividly recounts the momentous episodes that preceded the Civil War: the Dred Scott decision, the Lincoln-Douglas...

This first volume of Shelby Foote's classic narrative of the Civil War opens with Jefferson Davis’s farewell to the United Senate and ends on the bloody battlefields of Antietam and Perryville, as the full, horrible scope of America’s great war becomes clear. Exhaustively researched and masterfully written, Foote’s epic account of the Civil War unfolds like a classic novel. 
 
Includes maps throughout.
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"From the bestselling author of The Indispensables, the unknown and dramatic story of irregular guerrilla warfare that altered the course of the Civil War and inspired the origins of America's modern special operations forces. The Civil War is most remembered for the grand battles that have come to define it: Gettysburg, Antietam, Shiloh, among others. However, as bestselling author Patrick K. O'Donnell reveals in The Unvanquished, a vital shadow...

After shooting a Union soldier in her front hall with a pocket pistol, Belle Boyd became a courier and spy for the Confederate army, using her charms to seduce men on both sides. Emma Edmonds cut off her hair and assumed the identity of a man to enlist as a Union private, witnessing the bloodiest battles of the Civil War. The beautiful widow, Rose O'Neale Greenhow, engaged in affairs with powerful Northern politicians to gather intelligence for the...

From uniforms and submarines to potato cannons and regimental flags, this interactive book explores the history and inventions of the Civil War by providing building projects and activities. Detailed step-by-step instructions, diagrams, and templates for each project are interspersed with historical facts, biographies, anecdotes, and trivia about the real-life models.

The clever, devious, daring women who helped turn the tides of the Civil War

During America's most divisive war, both the Union and Confederacy took advantage of brave and courageous women willing to adventurously support their causes. These female spies of the Civil War participated in the world's second-oldest profession—spying—a profession perilous in the extreme. The tales of female spies are filled with suspense,

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The wonderful wordplay of J. Patrick Lewis breathes new life into the speeches of Lincoln, the letters of Grant and Lee, and the moving human drama of our country's Civil War. Lewis' poignant poetry gives young readers a vivid insight into the brutal conflict that tore America apart. The author draws on primary-source books and articles to inspire each poem, bringing the ordinary and extraordinary voices of the Civil War to light. The book also includes...

“Does for the Civil War period what Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States did for the study of American history in general.” —Library Journal
 
Historian David Williams has written the first account of the American Civil War as viewed though the eyes of ordinary people—foot soldiers, slaves, women, prisoners of war, draft resisters, Native Americans,...

"When Union soldier Caitlin McKae wakes up in Atlanta wounded in battle, the Georgian doctor believes her only secret is that she had been fighting for the Confederacy disguised as a man. In order to avoid arrest or worse, Caitlin hides her true identity and makes a new life for herself in Atlanta. Trained as a teacher, she accepts a job as a governess for the daughter of Noah Becker, a German immigrant lawyer who enlists with the Rebel army to defend...

Based on the celebrated PBS television series about the men and women who lived through the cataclysmic trial of our nationhood—the complete text of the magisterial illustrated work of history that The New York Times hailed as "a treasure for the eye and mind."

"The Civil War defined us as what we are and it opened us to being what we became, good and bad things.... It was the crossroads of our being, and it was a hell...