Amid the aristocratic ranks of the Confederate cavalry, Nathan Bedford Forrest was untutored, all but unlettered, and regarded as no more than a guerrilla. His tactic was the headlong charge, mounted with such swiftness and ferocity that General Sherman called him a "devil" who should "be hunted down and killed if it costs 10,000 lives and bankrupts the treasury." And in a war in which officers prided themselves on their decorum, Forrest habitually issued surrender-or-die ultimatums to the...

Hurst shows how Grant and Forrest brought to the battlefield the fabled virtues of the American working-class: hard work, ingenuity, and intense determination. Each man's background contributed to his triumphs on the battlefield, but the open-mindedness of his fellow commanders proved just as important. When the North embraced Grant, it won a stalwart defender. When the South rejected Forrest, by contrast, it sealed its fate.

Deep in the winter of 1862, on the border between Kentucky and Tennessee, two extraordinary military leaders faced each other in an epic clash that would transform them both and change the course of American history forever. Brigadier General Ulysses S. Grant had no significant military successes to his credit. He was barely clinging to his position within the Union Army-he had been officially charged with chronic drunkenness only days earlier, and his own troops despised him. His opponent...

In 1862, Ulysses S. Grant achieved what President Lincoln had sought since the start of the war: the first decisive Union victory. Fought on the western edge of the theater, the Forts Henry and Donelson campaign was a gruesome omen of what was to come.Grant, until then an obscure brigadier general with a reputation for drink, became the fighting man of the hour, earning the nickname “Unconditional Surrender” Grant for his relentless pounding of the Confederates. But he had a match ...

He was a fierce and controversial Civil War officer, an unschooled but brilliant cavalryman, an epic figure in America’s most celebrated war. A superb tactician and ferocious fighter, Nathan Bedford Forrest revolutionized the way armies fought in the course of rising from private to lieutenant general in the Confederate Army.In this detailed and fascinating account of the legend of the “Wizard of the Saddle,” we see a man whose strengths and flaws were both of towering proportions,...

Born to Battle examines the Civil War’s complex and decisive western theater through the exploits of its greatest figures: Ulysses S. Grant and Nathan Bedford Forrest. These two opposing giants squared off in some of the most epic campaigns of the war, starting at Shiloh and continuing through Perryville, Vicksburg, Chickamauga, and Chattanooga—battles in which the Union would slowly but surely divide the western Confederacy, setting the stage for the final showdowns of this blood...

Among the autobiographies of great military figures, Ulysses S. Grant's is certainly one of the finest, and it is arguably the most notable literary achievement of any American president: a lucid, compelling, and brutally honest chronicle of triumph and failure. From his frontier boyhood, to his heroics in battle, to the grinding poverty from which the Civil War ironically rescued him, these memoirs are a mesmerizing, deeply moving account of a brilliant man told with great courage as he r...

September 1938.Hitler is determined to start a war. Chamberlain is desperate to preserve the peace.The issue is to be decided in a city that will forever afterwards be notorious for what takes place there. Munich.As Chamberlain’s plane judders across the Channel and the Fürher’s train steams relentlessly south from Berlin, two young men travel with secrets of their own. Hugh Legat is one of Chamberlain’s private secretaries, Paul Hartmann a German diplomat and membe...

The Pulitzer Prize–nominated author of Forrest Gump examines Confederate general John Bell Hood's fateful maneuvers in the final moments of the Civil War.In Shrouds of Glory, acclaimed novelist and historian Winston Groom introduces readers to the courageous but reckless Hood, prematurely thrust into the spotlight by a combination of destiny and fate. Witness the unlikely rise of this young Confederate, who graduated forty-fourth out of a class of...

One of the most intriguing and storied episodes of the Civil War, the 1862 Shenandoah Valley Campaign has heretofore been related only from the Confederate point of view. Moving seamlessly between tactical details and analysis of strategic significance, Peter Cozzens presents a balanced, comprehensive account of a campaign that has long been romanticized but little understood. He offers new interpretations of the campaign and the reasons for Stonewall Jackson’s success, demonstrates instan...

**Winner of the Guggenheim-Lehrman Prize in Military HistoryAn Economist Best Book of the YearA Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Book of the Year**The Battle of Gettysburg has been written about at length and thoroughly dissected in terms of strategic importance, but never before has a book taken readers so close to the experience of the individual soldier.Two-time Lincoln Prize winner Allen C. Guelzo shows us the face, the sights and the sou...

With hundreds of entries, as well as photographs, drawings, and a handy time line of events, Civil War, A to Z encompasses everything about this historic conflict . . . from Appomattox to Zouaves.This encyclopedic illustrated reference features facts both familiar and engagingly new, organized in an easy-to-follow alphabetical format. Ranging from the basic to the bizarre, from secession to spies to all kinds of swords, Civil War, A to Z creates a complete picture...