American Military

In the tradition of Sebastian Junger’s Tribe and Chris Hedges’s classic War Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning, a powerful investigation into the fraught history and ominous future of military education in the United States, and how it formed and fuels increasingly volatile strains of American...

A Pulitzer Prize-winning historian's acclaimed Civil War history of the complex man and controversial Union commander whose battlefield brilliance ensured the downfall of the Confederacy. Preeminent Civil War historian Bruce Catton narrows his focus on commander Ulysses S. Grant, whose bold tactics and relentless dedication to the Union ultimately ensured a Northern victory in the nation's bloodiest conflict.

Edwin M. Stanton (1814-1869), one of the 19th 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 50 years, William Marvel offers a detailed reexamination of Stanton's life, career, and legacy.

This guide to traditional bowhunting with a longbow or recurve combines the best of both worlds for beginners and veteran bowhunters. How-to chapters share hard-earned wisdom that will help you perfect your skills and get close to game, while engaging stories tell of the authors experiences hunting white-tailed deer in the east, chasing big game in the American West, and trekking to South Africa in search of Greater Kudu and other plains game.

The long-anticipated origin story of legendary Marine, fan favorite, and father of literary icon Bob Lee takes us to the battlefields of World War II as Earl Swagger embarks on a top secret and deadly mission—from Pulitzer Prize­–winning and New York Times bestselling Stephen Hunter, “one...

The Cotton Kingdom recounts his daily observations of the curse of slavery: the poverty it brought to both black and white people, the inadequacies of the plantation system, and the economic consequences and problems associated with America’s most “peculiar institution.” Disproving the opinion that “cotton is king”, Olmsted examined the huge differences between the economies of the northern and southern states, contrasting the more successful, wealthy, and progressive North with the South, which was stubbornly convinced of the necessity of slavery.

To contain secrets, American and Soviet leaders created plutopias - communities of nuclear families living in highly subsidized, limited-access atomic cities. Fully employed and medically monitored, the residents of Richland and Ozersk enjoyed all the pleasures of consumer society while nearby, migrants, prisoners, and soldiers were banned from plutopia - they lived in temporary "staging grounds" and often performed the most dangerous work at the plant.

In volume 2, Burlingame examines Lincoln's presidency and the trials of the Civil War. He supplies fascinating details on the crisis over Fort Sumter and the relentless office seekers who plagued Lincoln. He introduces listeners to the president's battles with hostile newspaper editors and his quarrels with incompetent field commanders. Burlingame also interprets Lincoln's private life, discussing his marriage to Mary Todd, the untimely death of his son, Willie, to disease in 1862, and his recurrent anguish over the enormous human costs of the war.

Fiasco, Thomas E. Ricks’s #1 New York Times bestseller, transformed the political dialogue on the war in Iraq—The Gamble is the next news breaking installment Thomas E. Ricks uses hundreds of hours of exclusive interviews with top officers in Iraq and extraordinary on-the-ground reportage to...

American History, Volume 1 surveys the broad sweep of American history from the first Native American societies to the end of the Reconstruction period, following the Civil War. Drawing on a deep range of research and years of classroom teaching experience, Thomas S. Kidd offers students an engaging overview of the first half of American history. The volume features illuminating stories of people from well known presidents and generals, to lesser-known men and women who struggled under slavery and other forms of oppression to make their place in American life.

The incredible true story of former Navy SEAL Mike Day, who survived being shot twenty-seven times while deployed in Iraq. On the night of April 6, 2007, in Iraq's Anbar Province, Senior Chief Mike Day, his team of Navy SEALs, and a group of Iraqi scouts were on the hunt for a high-level al...

When European missionaries first arrived in India in the sixteenth century, they entered a world both fascinating and bewildering. Hinduism, as they saw it, was a pagan mess: the worship of devils and monsters by a people who burned women alive, performed outlandish rites and fed children to...

A two-time Newbery Honor Book author, Jim Murphy is among the world’s finest writers of nonfiction for children. In A Savage Thunder he takes listeners back to the American Civil War to tell the terrible yet extraordinary story of the Battle of Antietam. With the entire world watching, two armies met in Maryland in 1862. The Union needed a victory. The Confederacy hoped to continue its success. When the smoke cleared, 23,000 men were dead or wounded—and the momentum had shifted to the Union.

A biography of William T. Sherman by the military theorist and author of Scipio Africanus: Greater Than Napoleon.

In the first multivolume biography of Abraham Lincoln to be published in decades, Lincoln scholar Michael Burlingame offers a fresh look at the life of one of America's greatest presidents. Incorporating the field notes of earlier biographers along with decades of research in multiple manuscript archives and long-neglected newspapers, this remarkable work will both alter and reinforce our current understanding of America's 16th president.

Another thrilling adventure featuring John Wells, the deep cover CIA operative from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Faithful Spy and The Deceivers. John Wells barely survived his homecoming when it was thought he’d become too close to the terrorists. Though his wounds have...

In a lifetime shaped by politics, President Franklin D. Roosevelt proved himself a master manipulator of Congress, the press, and the public. But when war in Europe and Asia threatened America's shores, FDR found himself in a world turned upside down, where his friends became his foes, his enemies his allies. To help wage democracy's first "total war", he turned to one of history's most remarkable triumvirates.

The period following the Civil War was one of the most controversial eras in American history. This comprehensive account of the period captures the drama of those turbulent years that played such an important role in shaping modern America.

In the years immediately after the Civil War, tens of thousands of former slaves deposited millions of dollars into the Freedman's Bank. African Americans envisioned this new bank as a launching pad for economic growth and self-determination. But only nine years after it opened, their trust was betrayed and the Freedman's Bank collapsed. Fully informed by new archival findings, historian Justene Hill Edwards unearths a major turning point in American history in this comprehensive account of the Freedman's Bank and its depositors

"A story of epic proportions [and] an awesome feat of biographical reconstruction."—The Boston Globe **This program includes an original foreword, read by Rick Atkinson, and exclusive to the audiobook, as well as a bonus conversation between the author and Ty Seidule** For more on Rick...