Books in CIVIL WAR series

This collection of fictional sightings creates the potential for a few nightmares a la Stephen King. -School Library JournalA Union Lieutenant keeps his promise to return to his sweetheart in Brooklyn and waltz to "The Blue Danube," even in death. In rural Virginia, a group of privileged pranksters suffer for dismissing the legend of the ghost who guards a Confederate shot tower. In a small town in South Carolina, a washer woman goes mad when she hears an army of the dead march through the streets night after night, at the stroke of midnight. After a war where passions were so intense, where so many died before they could finish the business of living, is it any wonder that stories of ghosts persist 130 years later? Some of these stories were written at the time of the Civil War, and some decades later. They vary from the interior horror of Ambrose Bierce's “Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” to the deceptively nostalgic tone of Mary Elizabeth Councilman's “Shot-Tower Ghost.” Some center on Union soldiers, others on Confederates. But what unifies these stories is the horror of the losses we sustained, a horror that cannot be measured in numbers or dollars but can only be conveyed in the language of our nation's imagination. These eerie stories teach readers about resourcefulness, courage and responsibility.

Edwin M. Stanton (1814-1869), one of the nineteenth century's most impressive legal and political minds, wielded enormous influence and power as Lincoln's secretary of war during most of the Civil War and under Johnson during the early years of Reconstruction. In the first full biography of Stanton in more than fifty years, William Marvel offers a detailed reexamination of Stanton's life, career, and legacy. Marvel argues that while Stanton was a formidable advocate and politician, his character was hardly benign. Climbing from a difficult youth to the pinnacle of power, Stanton used his authority--and the public coffers--to pursue political vendettas, and he exercised sweeping wartime powers with a cavalier disregard for civil liberties. Though Lincoln's ability to harness a cabinet with sharp divisions and strong personalities is widely celebrated, Marvel suggests that Stanton's tenure raises important questions about Lincoln's actual control over the executive branch. This insightful biography also reveals why men like Ulysses S. Grant considered Stanton a coward and a bully, who was unashamed to use political power for partisan enforcement and personal preservation.

[Read by Peter Berkrot]New York Times bestselling author Ralph Peters returns with the fourth installment in his Boyd Award-winning series on the Civil War.Glory turned grim … and warfare changed forever.From the butchery of the Crater, where stunning success collapsed into a massacre, through near-constant battles fought by heat-stricken soldiers, to the crucial election of 1864, The Damned of Petersburg resurrects the American Civil War's hard reality, as plumes and sabers gave way to miles of trenches.Amid the slaughter of those fateful months, fabled leaders -- Grant and Lee, Winfield Scott Hancock and A. P. Hill -- turned for help to rising heroes, Confederates like ''Little Billy'' Mahone and Wade Hampton, last of the cavaliers, and Union warriors such as the tragedy-stricken Francis Channing Barlow and the fearless Nelson Miles, a general at twenty-four.Ralph Peters does not forget the men in the ranks, the common soldiers who paid the price for the blunders of commanders who would never know their names. In desperate battles now forgotten -- such as Deep Bottom, Globe Tavern, and Reams Station -- soldiers on both sides were pushed to the last human limits but fought on as their superiors struggled to master a terrible new age of warfare.The Damned of Petersburg revives heroes aplenty, enriching our knowledge of our most terrible war, but above all, this novel is a tribute to the endurance and courage of the American soldier, North and South.