The Red Badge of Courage (Stephen Crane)

The Red Badge of Courage

Stephen Crane

Blurb: He felt that in this crisis his laws of life were useless. Whatever he had learned of himself was here of no avail. He was an unknown quantity.

Following one soldier's journey from naive recruit to hardened survivor, The Red Badge of Courage is a vivid and powerfully psychological take on the American Civil War. Fighting for the Union army, Henry Fleming is thrown into a bloody war where the harsh realities and horrors of battle quickly become evident. Fearful, occasionally vain, but always viewing the war with honest eyes, Henry eventually comes to thrive as a soldier in combat and it is with a new conscience and outlook that he matures into manhood. 

ISBN: 9780007902200 (Paperback)

Year: 1895

Publisher: Collins Classics

Pages: 188 (Fiction)

Links

1. Wikipedia page for the book

2. Spark Notes on the book

3. Buy from Amazon

4. Read the text online here

5. Goodreads page for the book

The American Civil War - A Military History (John Keegan)

The American Civil War - A Military History

John Keegan

Blurb: This magisterial history of the first modern war is on the scale of John Keegan's classics, A History of Warfare and The First World War. In his sweeping, unputdownable narrative he highlights the geography, leadership and strategic logic at the heart of the conflict.

John Keegan writes: 'The geography of the battlefield is to me a living reality. I know the appearance of the battlefields, I know the distances between them, I know the cemeteries in which the dead were buried. What constantly puzzles me, however, is to relate the landmarks of the war to its events, chronology, strategy and logic. That war went on for so long and over such an enormous space - the Confederacy covered an area as large as Europe west of Russia - and involved so many battles (260 is the common reckoning) and so many people, that its events conform to no patterns at all.

'How to make sense of the war is the question. In recent years, this became the primary concern of historians, after nearly a century of writing concerned either with arguing the rights and wrongs or simply retelling the story chronologically.

'The story of America is, in one of its dimensions, that of man and wilderness. The story can be told as one in which man tames and dominates; it can equally be told as one in which nature is never really subdued, always bides its time, often asserts its power to remind men of their pygmy status. The Civil War is certainly a story of the struggle of man against man; it is equally a story of the struggle of man against geography, in which those who had a feel for the country eventually succeeded because they knew how to work with the landscape instead of ignoring or defying it.'

ISBN: 9780091794835 (Hardback)

Year: 2009

Publisher: Hutchinson

Pages: 394 (Non-Fiction)

Links

1. Buy from Amazon

2. Review of the book

3. Civil War Collection page

4. Another review

5. Buy from Barnes and Noble

The Dakota Trail (Ralph Compton novel by Robert Vaughan)

The Dakota Trail

Ralph Compton novel by Robert Vaughan

Blurb: After the Civil War, Dick Hodson returns to his home of Windom, Texas, the lone survivor of all the men who left to fight against the Union. He finds the former cattle town destitute, for there were no able ranch hands to drive the herds, and now the few ranches that survived are on the edge of ruin.

To save the town, Dick plans to drive the remaining cattle north with a trail party made up of raw greenhorn children. But the unforgiving trail is the least of their problems. A gang of merciless cutthroats is waiting for them - hired by the evil Bryan Phelps, whose fortune rests on the failure of the desperate cattle drive.

Now, with little more than his own cunning and the blind courage of his young crew, Dick Hodson is going to war...

ISBN: 0451204174 (Paperback)

Year: 2001

Publisher: Signet

Pages: 261 (Fiction)

Links

1. Author's Wikipedia page

2. Google books page

3. Buy from Amazon

4. List of other books by the author

5. Author's Good reads page

The Widow of the South (Robert Hicks)

The Widow of the South

Robert Hicks

Blurb: If God was watching that Indian summer afternoon of 30 November 1864, some say he would have been looking at the continent of America, in the central part of a state called Tennessee, at a little town called Franklin - where a terrible battle was about to begin.

Within a few short hours nearly ten thousand men would be dead, and the lives of many others changed utterly; none more so than that of Carrie McGavock, who would find her home taken over by the Confederate Army and turned into a field hospital. On the field of battle, a seasoned Southern soldier, Zachariah Cashwell, would drop his gun and charge forward into Yankee territory holding only the flag of his company's colours.

In the pain-filled days and weeks that followed, both would find a form of mutual healing that neither thought possible.

In an extraordinary debut novel, based on a true story, Robert Hicks paints an unforgettable portrait of a woman who, through love and loss, found a cause. Known throughout the century as the Widow of the South, Carrie McGavock gave her heart first to a stranger, then to a piece of hallowed ground, becoming in the process a symbol of a nation's soul.

ISBN: 059305590 (Paperback)

Year: 2005

Publisher: Bantam Press

Pages: 432 (Fiction)

Links

1. Review of the book

2. Buy from Amazon

3. Goodreads page

4. Author's Wikipedia page

5. Official site of the book and author

Abraham Lincoln: A Life (Thomas Keneally)

Abraham Lincoln: A Life

Thomas Keneally

Blurb: A master storyteller reveals Lincoln as he truly lived. Author of the award-winning novel that inspired the film Schindler's List and acclaimed for his recent Civil War biography, American Scoundrel, Thomas Keneally delves with relish - and a keen, fresh eye - into Abraham Lincoln's complicated persona. Abraham Lincoln depicts all the amazing man's triumphs, insecurities, and crushing defeats with the uncanny insight: his early poverty and the ambition that propelled him out of it; shaping of the man and his political philosophy by youthful exposure to Christianity, slavery, and business; his tempestuous marriage and his fatherly love. Abraham Lincoln is an incisive study of a turning point in our history and a revealing portrait of its pivotal figure, his greatness etched even more clearly in this very touching human story.

ISBN: 9780143114758 (Paperback)

Year: 2003

Publisher: Penguin

Pages: 183 (Non-Fiction)

Links

1. Buy the ebook

2. Blog review

3. Blogcritics review

4. Google books page

5. White House page on Abe