Freedom Civil War

A New York Times bestseller! A New York Times Book Review Notable Book of 2017 A dual biography of Winston Churchill and George Orwell, who preserved democracy from the threats of authoritarianism, from the left and right alike. Both George Orwell and Winston Churchill came close to death in the...

After an elderly man jumped from New York's Pulitzer Building, in 1911, his death made the front page of the New York Times: "WorldDome Suicide a Famous War Spy". By then Pryce Lewis had slipped entirely offstage; but, as Gavin Mortimer reveals, the headline did him justice, speaking to the dramatic, vitally important, and until now untold role he had played in the Civil War.

Pulitzer Prize–winning former Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson tells our nation’s torturous racial history through his own family’s story, starting with his great-grandfather’s freedom from slavery and threading his way to his own narrative and reaching today’s Black Lives...

This work fills an important gap in the literature of slavery's demise. Unlike other authors who focus largely on specific time periods or regional areas, Allen Carden presents a thematically structured national synthesis of emancipation. Freedom's Delay offers a comprehensive and unique overview of the process of manumission commencing in 1776 when slavery was a national institution, not just the southern experience known historically by most Americans.

“This is a powerful, vitally important story, and Lane brings it to life with not only vast amounts of research but with a remarkable gift for storytelling that makes the pages fly by.” —Candice Millard, author of The River of Doubt and Hero of the Empire Freedom’s Detective reveals the...

During the Civil War his movements from battlefield to battlefield were followed in the North and in the South nearly as closely as those of generals, though he was not in the military. After the war, his swift response to Ku Klux Klan violence sparked passage of a landmark civil rights law, though he was not a politician. When he died newspapers reported his death from coast to coast, yet he's unknown today. He was the man who delivered the most valuable ingredient in United States soldiers' fighting spirit during those terrible war years—letters between the front lines and the home front.

The 27th United States Colored Troops (USCT), composed largely of free black Ohio men, served in the Union army from April 1864 to September 1865 in Virginia and North Carolina. It was the first time most members of the unit had traveled so far from home. The men faced daily battles against racism and inferior treatment, training, and supplies. They suffered from the physical difficulties of military life, the horrors of warfare, and homesickness and worried about loved ones left at home without financial support.

Few have ever valued literacy as much as the enslaved Black people of the American South. For them, it was more than a means to a better life; it was a gateway to freedom and, in some instances, a tool for inspiring revolt. And few governments tried harder to suppress literacy than did those in the South. Everyone understood that knowledge was power: power to keep a person enslaved in mind and body, power to resist oppression. In the decades before the Civil War, Southern governments drove Black literacy underground, but it was too precious to be entirely stamped out.

Tell is the riveting story of Major Margaret Witt’s dedicated and decorated military career as a frontline flight nurse, and of her love and devotion to her partner - now wife - Laurie Johnson. Tell captures the tension and drama of the politically charged legal battle that led to the congressional repeal of the controversial law and helped pave the way for a suite of landmark political and legal victories for gay rights.

During World War II, Heinz Drossel saved Soviet prisoners of war and several Jews, including Marianne Hirschfeld. Again and again, he wasn't afraid to risk his own life when others' safety was at risk. Nearly all of Hirschfeld's family members were murdered by Nazis; she survived in hiding - and met Heinz again by coincidence after the war was over. They married in 1946. At that time, starting over was difficult. In the judicial service, Drossel witnessed Nazis continuing with their careers....

Thulani Davis provides a sweeping rethinking of Reconstruction by tracing how the four million people newly freed from bondage created political organizations and connections that mobilized communities across the South. Drawing on the practices of community they developed while enslaved, freedpeople built new settlements and created a network of circuits through which they imagined, enacted, and defended freedom. This history shows that these circuits linked rural and urban organizations, labor struggles, and political culture with news, strategies, education, and mutual aid.

Considered one of “the most innovative studies of American emancipation in the Civil War” (David W. Blight, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Frederick Douglass), Somewhere Toward Freedom is a groundbreaking account of Sherman’s March to the Sea—the critical Civil War campaign that...

In this international history of Reconstruction, Don Doyle chronicles the world events inspired by the Civil War. Between 1865 and 1870, France withdrew from Mexico, Russia sold Alaska to the US, and Britain proclaimed the new state of Canada. British workers demanded more voting rights, Spain toppled Queen Isabella II and ended slavery in its Caribbean colonies, Cubans rose against Spanish rule, France overthrew Napoleon III, and the kingdom of Pope Pius IX fell before the Italian Risorgimento.

The extraordinary life of Priscilla Joyner and her quest—along with other formerly enslaved people—to define freedom after the Civil War. Priscilla Joyner was born into the world of slavery in 1858 North Carolina and came of age at the dawn of emancipation. Raised by a white slaveholding...

"I was born a slave, as was my father before me, but I shall die a free man." Thus begins the poignant story of Samuel Washburn, born a slave in 1850. A young master's cruelty leads to an unforeseen confrontation, which results in Sam and his cousin fleeing the plantation for their lives. They run north to freedom, only to return the South to fight for the greater cause in the Civil War.

In this audiobook, we'll delve into the events leading up to this pivotal battle, the key players, the gruesome fighting itself, and the profound effects that rippled across the United States and the world. The Battle of Antietam is not merely a tale of generals and strategies, of charges and retreats; it is a story of individual valor, national identity, and the ceaseless quest for freedom. It is a single day that encapsulates the immense human drama that was the American Civil War.

Executive Order 9981, issued by President Harry Truman on July 26, 1948, desegregated all branches of the United States military by decree. EO 9981 is often portrayed as a heroic and unexpected move by Truman. But in reality, Truman's history-making order was the culmination of more than 150 years of legal, political, and moral struggle.

No Human Is Illegal is a powerful document of one lawyer's fight for those seeking a better life in America against its ever-tightening borders. For author Mulligan Sepúlveda, the son and husband of Spanish-speaking immigrants, the battle for immigration reform is personal. Mulligan Sepúlveda discusses visiting border detention centers, defending undocumented immigrants in court, and taking his services to JFK to represent people being turned away at the gates during Trump's infamous travel ban.

In The New Axis of Evil: Exposing the Bipartisan War on Liberty, seasoned political analyst David Leach draws on his years of experience in the political arena to expose the players in this war. This groundbreaking book examines the current state of liberty in America, exposing how politicians, religious leaders, and members of the media have become allies in an open attack on our God-given rights. Through persuasive examination, Leach reveals how these advocates of bigger, more powerful government have systematically redefined liberty as we understand it.

Often remembered as the president who died shortly after taking office, William Henry Harrison remains misunderstood by most Americans. Before becoming the ninth president of the United States in 1841, Harrison was instrumental in shaping the early years of westward expansion. Robert M. Owens now explores that era through the lens of Harrison’s career, providing a new synthesis of his role in the political development of Indiana Territory and in shaping Indian policy in the Old Northwest.