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In 1897, five years after he won the Medal of Honor, General Nelson A. Miles published his memoirs, often cited and now made widely available in this two-volume Bison Book edition. While relating his own colorful adventures, General Miles also ranges over time and space, taking into account fur traders, trail blazers, gold seekers, and missionaries. The first volume described his service in the Civil War and his campaigns against the Indians on the northern plains. Volume 2 follows General Miles to Washington Territory, where he com-mands the Department of Columbia, and finally to the Southwest, where he succeeds General George Crook in directing the fight against the Apaches. The pursuit of Geronimo is one of the many subjects illustrated here by Frederic Remington. In his introduction to the second volume Robert Wooster notes the importance of this memoir as a document on the Indian wars, extremely revealing of the character of a difficult but competent general.
Theodore Roosevelt called him "a brave peacock." Pompous, vainglorious, but extremely capable, General Nelson A. Miles served his country with distinction for forty-two years. During the Civil War he fought in almost every important battle of the Army of the Potomac, and by its end had been promoted to the rank of major general of volunteers. In 1869 Miles was transferred to the West, where he achieved his greatest fame fighting against the Sioux, Cheyennes, Apaches, and Nez Perces. These colorful memoirs, filled with historical figures and illustrated by Frederic Remington, were first published in 1897, near the end of his career. Volume 1 takes up Miles's early years in the East, his Civil War action, and his campaigns against the Indians on the plains, ending with chapters on the battle at the Little Bighorn and the surrender of Sitting Bull. Volume 2 shifts to the Northwest and Miles's role in the Indian wars there.
With the assistance of several scholars, including James M. McPherson and Gary Gallagher, and a long-time specialist in Civil War books, Ralph Newman, David Eicher has selected for inclusion in The Civil War in Books the 1,100 most important books on the war. These are organized into categories as wide-ranging as "Battles and Campaigns," "Biographies, Memoirs, and Letters," "Unit Histories," and "General Works." The last of these includes volumes on black Americans and the war, battlefields, fiction, pictorial works, politics, prisons, railroads, and a host of other topics. Annotations are included for all entries in the work, which is presented in an oversized 8 1/2 x 11 inch volume in two-column format. Appendixes list "prolific" Civil War publishers and other Civil War bibliographies, and the works included in Eicher's mammoth undertaking are indexed by author or editor and by title. Gary Gallagher's foreword traces the development of Civil War bibliographies and declares that Eicher's annotation exceeds that of any previous comprehensive volume. The Civil War in Books, Gallagher believes, is "precisely the type of guide" that has been needed. The first full-scale, fully-annotated bibliography on the Civil War to appear in more than thirty years, Eicher's The Civil War in Books is a remarkable compendium of the best reading available about the worst conflict ever to strike the United States. The bibliography, the most valuable reference book on the subject since The Civil War Day by Day, will be essential for college and university libraries, dealers in rare and secondhand books, and Civil War buffs.
Few American military figures are more revered than General John J. "Black Jack" Pershing (1860--1948), who is most famous for leading the American Expeditionary Forces in World War I. The only soldier besides George Washington to be promoted to the highest rank in the U.S. Army (General of the Armies), Pershing was a mentor to the generation of generals who led America's forces during the Second World War. Though Pershing published a two-volume memoir, My Experiences in the World War, and has been the subject of numerous biographies, few know that he spent many years drafting a memoir of his experiences prior to the First World War. In My Life Before the World War, 1860--1917, John T. Greenwood rescues this vital resource from obscurity, making Pershing's valuable insights into key events in history widely available for the first time. Pershing performed frontier duty against the Apaches and Sioux from 1886--1891, fought in Cuba in 1898, served three tours of duty in the Philippines, and was an observer with the Japanese Army in 1905 during the Russo-Japanese War. He also commanded the Mexican Punitive Expedition to capture Pancho Villa in 1916--1917. My Life Before the World War provides a rich personal account of events, people, and places as told by an observer at the center of the action. Carefully edited and annotated, this memoir is a significant contribution to our understanding of a legendary American soldier and the historic events in which he participated.