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The Civil War (Best of American Heritage)
The Civil War - Best of American Heritage Author:Stephen W. Sears (Editor) In the first essay of the very first issue of American Heritage, Bruce Catton, the magazine's founding editor, spoke of the conflict that defined us as Americans. Since then, the magazine has regularly published articles about the war that left six hundred thousand Americans dead and that still affects us today. — Now the highly regarded Civi... more »l War historian Stephen Sears has selected the most compelling of these stories. The selection includes an article by James McPherson, the best-selling author of The Battle Cry of Freedom, explaining why the war is as urgent a matter to the citizens of today as it was to those of 1862; a description of how Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson achieved, in the face of tremendous odds, one of the most audacious victories in the history of warfare; the brave and bitter saga of Sergeant William Walker, who believed his government when it promised him that black troops would be paid as well as white troops; the story of the hundred-day miracle of the building of the revolutionary Union warship Monitor, just in the nick of time; Stephen Oates's article on the shrewd and subtle congressional politicking that made emancipation the law of the land; and an account of how Ulysses S. Grant, swindled out of his fortune, lay dying, readying himself for his final battle with the same dogged courage and skill he had shown in the lines before Petersburg.
Eighteen stories have been assembled in this superb anthology -- a book filled with color, incident, and lively detail that captures the full scope of the war in all its terrible grandeur.« less