First published in 1956, this is an account of the arming of the Union forces in the Civil War, and of Lincoln's part in it. It has never been told in any comprehensive way before, and shows Lincoln in a new and engaging light.Lincoln was determined to win the war, yet his generals seemed unable to give him a victory, so he reasoned that a more efficient weapon would have to be invented. However, his main opponent, General James W. Ripley, who sat in charge of army ordnance, believe...

Winner of the 1988 Pulitzer Prize in History“For readers born since the 1930’s, who have grown up assuming the United States leads the world in science, The Launching of Modern American Science 1846-1876 will come as something of a shock. It shows that little over a century ago the American scientific community was small, mediocre and unpromising... Mr. Bruce has performed an invaluable service in retrieving from numerous archives the letters and diaries of mid-19th-centur...

A prominent public personality, Alexander Graham Bell (1847-1922), inventor of the telephone, teacher of the deaf, phonetician, showman and sage, was also a very private individual. With unrestricted access to Bell’s vast personal files, Robert V. Bruce takes the proper measure of Bell the man in this biography, which portrays Bell as intense, curious, struggling to overcome his very real limitations as a scientist and the negative effects of early fame (he invented the telephone while sti...