Examines the political, cultural, and military aspects of the conflict that tragically divided the United States in the mid-nineteenth century.

Part 1 of a five-part documentary series about World War II. In 1941, before Pearl Harbor was attacked, America was providing war materials to its democracies, and its young men were answering the call to service. Throughout America, "preparedness" was the watchword as the conflict that ignited in 1939 swept through Europe, Africa, and Asia, and a war with Japan loomed closer than ever.

Part 3 of a five-part documentary series about World War II. By 1943, the battle turned against North Africa, Allied invasions of Sicily and Italy, and plans were laid to bomb Germany. The liberation of Tunisia and the defense of Stalingrad began to crack the myth of Hitler's super-race, while Allied forces fought back against the Japanese in the Aleutians and on New Guinea and Guadaloanal.

Part 5 of a five-part documentary series about World War II. As the Battle of the Bulge raged on into 1945, the U.S. battled stiff resistance on Leyte and Iwa Jima in the Pacific, and Americans brought the war into the Fatherland while mourning President Roosevelt, who did not live to see their final victory, signaled by the deaths of Mussolini and Hitler and the atomic bombs that defeated Japan.

Between February 1864 and April 1865, 41,000 Union prisoners of war were taken to the stockade at Anderson Station, Georgia, where nearly 13,000 of them died. Most contemporary accounts placed the blame for the tragedy squarely on the shoulders of the Confederates who administered the prison or on a conspiracy of higher-ranking officials. According to William Marvel, virulent disease and severe shortages of vegetables, medical supplies, and other...

[A] well-written, comprehensively researched biography.--Publishers Weekly "Will both edify the scholar while captivating and entertaining the general reader. . . . Cutrer's research is impeccable, his prose vigorous, and his life of McCulloch likely to remain the standard for many years.--Civil War "A well-crafted work that makes an important contribution to understanding the frontier military tradition and the early stages of the Civil War in...

Ambrose Burnside, the Union general, was a major player on the Civil War stage from the first clash at Bull Run until the final summer of the war. He led a corps or army during most of this time and played important roles in various theaters of the war. But until now, he has been remembered mostly for his distinctive side-whiskers that gave us the term "sideburns" and as an incompetent leader who threw away thousands of lives in the bloody battle...

Although much has been written about the ways in which Confederate politics affected the course of the Civil War, George Rable is the first historian to investigate Confederate political culture in its own right. Focusing on the assumptions, values, and beliefs that formed the foundation of Confederate political ideology, Rable reveals how southerners attempted to purify the political process and avoid what they saw as the evils of parties and partisanship....

The man who gave his name to the greatest failed frontal attack in American military history, George E. Pickett is among the most famous Confederate generals of the Civil War. But even today he remains imperfectly understood, a figure shrouded in Lost Cause mythology. In this carefully researched biography, Lesley Gordon moves beyond earlier studies of Pickett. By investigating the central role played by his wife LaSalle in controlling his historical...

Of all the heroes produced by the Civil War, Robert E. Lee is the most revered and perhaps the most misunderstood. Lee is widely portrayed as an ardent antisecessionist who left the United States Army only because he would not draw his sword against his native Virginia, a Southern aristocrat who opposed slavery, and a brilliant military leader whose exploits sustained the Confederate cause. Alan Nolan explodes these and other assumptions about Lee...