Big Books: 214 books

"July 1, 1864: This campaign is coming down to a question of muscle and nerve. It is the 62d day for us, over 50 of which we have passed under fire." One of the earliest to enlist in the Union cause of the American Civil War upon Lincoln's call for volunteers, Charles Wills kept a diary throughout...

From April 17 to May 2, 1863, one of the most daring Union actions took place as a diversion to Grant's Vicksburg campaign. A cavalry force of 1,700 men under Colonel Benjamin Grierson rode six hundred miles through Rebel territory to tear up railroads, free slaves, and destroy Confederate supplies...

When the American Civil War came, John Hubbard joined the Confederate cavalry. Early in the war he made this observation: "...one day I met a soldier speeding a magnificent black horse along a country road as if for exercise, and the pleasure of being astride of so fine an animal. On closer inspection,...

You will be hard-pressed to find a memoir of the American Civil War that is richer in wonderful anecdotes about Grant, Meade, Sheridan, Sherman, and a host of other prominent leaders of the war. Harvard graduate Theodore Lyman was a wealthy man from birth but in 1863, he joined the staff of General...

Long considered one of the best of the captive narratives from the 19th century, Abbie Gardner's thrilling and graphic tale of her abduction by a band of Santee Sioux in 1857 will captivate you from beginning to end. Barely 14 years old, her family was butchered before her eyes and she witnessed the...

Given the intimacy of the friendship between Abraham Lincoln and Joshua Fry Speed, it's remarkable that there is not more biographical information about Speed. There have been a few sketches and at least one book on the relationship of the Speed brothers to Lincoln. In this long-forgotten, slim volume,...

As a Connecticut captain in America's Revolutionary War, Samuel Richards lived through the carnage and deprivations that were the cost of freedom from England. His diary is important for its vivid descriptions of life in the ranks during battle, starvation, and the great events of his day. Along...

General William Tecumseh Sherman said of Confederate womanhood: “You women are the toughest set I ever knew. The men would have given up long ago but for you. I believe you would keep this war up for thirty years." Yet unlike many collections penned for the Daughters of the Confederacy, this book...

This remarkable book has been out of print for over a century and yet is one of the most intimate and compelling personal memoirs of the Civil War. Widow Annie Turner Wittenmyer spent the years of the American Civil War in the thick of exploding shells, shattered bodies, exhausted souls, and the...

"Great anxiety is expressed by all to reach home by the Fourth of July, which at present looks very probable. But, dear Journal, I cannot write, I feel too good." Jenk Jones would make it home on the 3rd of July, 1865. After three long years away from home with the 6th Wisconsin Artillery Battery,...

Most of the Union soldiers who experienced the wrath of Southern women during the American Civil War came away feeling that fighting the Southern men was a more appealing proposition. General William Tecumseh Sherman said, “You women are the toughest set I ever knew. The men would have given up...

Almost more remarkable than having survived the horrors of the Confederate prison at Andersonville is the fact that Melvin Grigsby could 33 years later pen this often hilarious recounting of his experiences in the American Civil War. He does not shy away from descriptions of life as it was in Andersonville....

In the 21st Century, America's first president seems as frozen in time as his marble busts. What was it that made George Washington first in the hearts of his contemporaries. Here in the diaries from the last years of his life, you get a glimpse at Washington, the man. He was a plantation owner,...

Leo Tolstoy's fascinating classic treatise on art is as relevant today as it was over one hundred years ago. Highly-readable, often witty, anyone with an interest in the nature of art and its connection to what it is to be human will find this book a treat. For the first time, this long out-of-print...