Civil War Biography

An intimate study of Abraham Lincoln’s powerful vision of democracy, which guided him through the Civil War and is still relevant today—by a best-selling historian and three-time winner of the Lincoln Prize *Winner of the 2024 Abraham Lincoln Institute Book Prize* *Finalist for the 2025...

Mary Jane Seacole (1805­-1881) was a British Jamaican nurse, author, world traveler, and businesswoman renowned for her work with the soldiers of the Crimean War.

A lively and captivating journey through the world of the Transcendentalists, America’s first group of public intellectuals, whose visionary ideas reinvented our culture and politics and remain an inspiration today. In the 1840s, America was a land of utopian promise, and nowhere captured this...

The enthralling story of the greatest Civil War battle at sea by the award-winning and bestselling historians Phil Keith and Tom Clavin. On June 19, 1864, just off the coast of France, one of the most dramatic naval battles in history took place. On a clear day with windswept skies, the dreaded...

A gripping narrative history of Spain’s most brilliant and troubled literary family—a tale about the making of art, myth, and legacy—set against the upheaval of the Spanish Civil War and beyond. In this absorbing and atmospheric historical narrative, journalist Aaron Shulman takes us...

New York Times bestselling author and Newbery Honor recipient Steve Sheinkin gives young listeners the causes and curses that divided America into Union and Confederate nations in Two Miserable Presidents: The Amazing, Terrible, and Totally True Story of the Civil War. A Bank Street Best...

This book is considered to be the best account of the Civil War ever written from the Confederate point of view. It is also the one most frequently cited by historians of the Western campaigns. Sam Watkins, a high private in the Army of Tennessee, brings a vividness and detail to his story unmatched in the genre.

Written in the form of a letter to her granddaughter, the author of this little book describes her plantation childhood, her marriage and parenthood, and her experiences during the Civil War and Reconstruction. In response to what she believed were misconceptions about antebellum Southern slavery, she argues that while some slaveholders were cruel, the majority were conscientious about the well-being of their servants and looked upon them as members of the household.

Caesar is still remembered for winning a civil war and helping bring about the end of the Roman Republic, leaving a line of emperors in its place, but it’s quite possible that none of what Caesar did would’ve happened without the template for such actions being set 40 years earlier.

John Bell Hood had done his job too well. In the fall of 1864, the commander of the Confederate Army of Tennessee had harassed Federal forces in North Georgia so badly that the Union commander, William T. Sherman, decided to abandon his position. During his subsequent “March to the Sea”, Sherman’s men lived off the land and made Georgia howl. Rather than confront the larger Federal force directly, Hood chose instead to strike northward into Tennessee.

A young queer millennial physicist unveils some of the most mind-bending physics concepts in the universe—and uses them to illuminate their own fascinating life story “I see physics everywhere,” Karmela Padavic-Callaghan writes. “It offers itself to me when I try to make sense of all the...

In the early 1900s, Watson Stewart set out to record the principal events of his life in a set of personal memoirs. These writings, originally finished on his 77th birthday in 1904, have been rediscovered and compiled - over 120 years later - by Watson’s descendants. The resulting text is an enlightening glimpse into life as a pioneer in a country on the brink of Civil War. Watson led a remarkable life filled with family tragedy, Native American relations, Civil War, and squabbles with some of the most famous historical figures in American history.

In All the Powers of Earth, Lincoln's incredible ascent to power in a world of chaos is newly revealed through the great biographer's extraordinary research and literary style. After a period of depression that he would ever find his way to greatness, Lincoln takes on the most powerful demagogue in the country, Stephen Douglas, in the debates for a Senate seat. He sidelines the front-runner William Seward, a former governor and senator for New York, to cinch the new Republican Party's nomination.

Nella notte tra il 17 e il 18 luglio 1936, il colpo di Stato delle truppe guidate dal generale Franco segnò l'inizio di una guerra civile che dilaniò la Spagna per i tre anni seguenti: fu una vera e propria prova generale della Seconda guerra mondiale, in cui vennero sperimentate sulla popolazione quelle atrocità che avrebbero caratterizzato il conflitto successivo. Alcuni dei protagonisti furono gli stessi: Hitler e Mussolini inviarono truppe in aiuto di Franco, e Stalin sostenne con armi, uomini e denaro le formazioni comuniste.

An accessible and entertaining biography of our nation’s greatest public servant and original political maverick John Quincy Adams, from the bassist of the Grammy-nominated band the Avett Brothers. During the tumultuous period between the era of the Founding Fathers and the disunion of the...

Robert E. Lee was a hero to some and a villain to others. For one side, he embodied the rebellion of the slave-holding South which had seceded from the Union; for the other side, he was a champion of the little guy, willing to marshal the forces of liberty to stand up against the federal government. How in the world do we get such divergent views on one single man?

A bracingly immediate memoir by a young man coming of age during the Syrian war, Brothers of the Gun is an intimate lens on the century’s bloodiest conflict and a profound meditation on kinship, home, and freedom. In 2011, Marwan Hisham and his two friends—fellow working-class college...

David Dixon Porter: The Life and Legacy of the Distinguished Union Rear Admiral during the Civil War chronicles Porter’s upbringing and how it prepared him for his important service in the Civil War. You will learn about Porter like never before.

Dramatic, lyrical, and beautiful, O Captain, My Captain tells the story of one of America’s greatest poets and how he was inspired by one of America’s greatest presidents.

Abraham Lincoln, our greatest president, believed that our national character was defined by three key moments: the writing of the Constitution, our declaration of independence from England, and the beginning of slavery on the North American continent.