Lawrence E. Crane, troubleshooter for the Chicago & Far Western Railroad, rode into Warbow prepared for the worst. Urgently summoned by the local land agent for the railroad, Crane found the town on the brink of explosive violence. A troop of calvalry stationed there refused to heed the local lawman, and more and more often there were clashed between soldiers and civilians. Bitterness had been growing, and tempers were further strained by a recent...

Crime did not take a holiday during the Civil War, far from it. As Tobin Buhk shows in this fast-paced narrative, the war created new opportunities to gain profits from illegal activities, to settle old scores against personal enemies under the cover of fighting the nation's enemies, to pillage, plunder, and murder amid the carnage and destruction that seemed to offer license to legitimize such crimes. Students of the Civil War will find new information...

From the former secretary of defense, a candid account of his experience serving Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Before Robert M. Gates received a call from the White House in 2006, he thought he'd left Washington politics behind: after working for six presidents in both the CIA and the National Security Council, he was happy in his role as president of Texas A & M University. But when he was asked...