"A president who governed a divided country has much to teach us in a twenty-first-century moment of polarization and political crisis. Abraham Lincoln was president when implacable secessionists gave no quarter in a clash of visions inextricably bound up with money, power, race, identity, and faith. He was hated and hailed, excoriated and revered. In Lincoln we can see the possibilities of the presidency as well as its limitations. At once familiar...

A New York Times Notable Book

The Professor and the Madman is an extraordinary tale of madness, genius, and the incredible obsessions of two remarkable men that led to the making of the Oxford English Dictionary—and literary history.

The making of the OED was one of the most ambitious projects ever undertaken. As definitions were collected, the overseeing committee, led by Professor James Murray,

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The newest installment in the New York Times #1 bestselling companion series to the Fox historical docudrama, Bill O'Reilly's Legends and Lies; The Civil War is a pulse-quickening account of the deadliest war in American history.
From the birth of the Republican Party to the Confederacy's first convention, the Underground Railroad to the Emancipation Proclamation, the Battle of Gettysburg to the assassination

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A young girl is curious about Abraham Lincoln and sets out to find out more about the life of the nation's sixteenth president.

"Everyone knows the story of Abraham Lincoln's assassination in 1865, but few are aware of the original conspiracy to kill him four years earlier in 1861, literally on his way to Washington, D.C., for his first inauguration. The conspirators were part of a pro-Southern secret society that didn't want an antislavery President in the White House. They planned an elaborate scheme to assassinate the brand new President in Baltimore as Lincoln's inauguration...

"Describes key women involved in the American Civil War, including workers of the Underground Railroad, spies, abolitionists, and battlefield nurses"--

"The thrilling and definitive biography of George Armstrong Custer's incredible Civil War years and the heroics that made him a legend From George Armstrong Custer's graduation from West Point to the daring cavalry charges that propelled him to the rank of General and national fame to a romance with his wife Libbie Bacon that is unmatched in American history, Custer's exploits are the stuff of legend. Not only did he capture the first Confederate...

In this brilliant biography T. J. Stiles offers a new understanding of the legendary outlaw Jesse James. Although he has often been portrayed as a Robin Hood of the old west, in this ground-breaking work Stiles places James within the context of the bloody conflicts of the Civil War to reveal a much more complicated and significant figure.

"Carries the reader scrupulously through James’s violent, violent life.... When [Stiles]…...

Presents the true story of eight-year-old Lula McLean, in whose parlor Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant in 1865, and her rag doll that was left on the parlor sofa and taken by Union Colonel Thomas Moore as a souvenir.

An enthralling and richly detailed biography of two gifted military commanders who changed the course of American history. Their names are forever linked in the history of the Civil War, but Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant could not have been more dissimilar. Lee came from a world of Southern gentility and aristocratic privilege while Grant had coarser, more common roots in the Midwest. As a young officer trained in the classic mold, Lee graduated...