Intro -- Title Page -- Dedication Page -- Copyright Page -- Preface -- 1 - Old Abe and the Coming of the War -- 2 - Meet the Eighth Wisconsin -- 3 - The Making of Soldiers -- 4 - To the Front -- 5 - The Valley of the Mississippi -- 6 - The Eagle Regiment -- 7 - The Battle of Corinth -- 8 - Opening the Mississippi -- 9 - The Vicksburg Campaign -- 10 - Used Up: The Siege of Vicksburg -- 11 - Camped Among the Pines -- 12 - On the Move -- 13 - The Price of Cotton -- 14 - The Battle for Furlough -- 15 - After the Devil -- 16 - Jackass Cavalry -- 17 - Nashville -- 18 - Denouement -- 19 - In Tangel's Feature -- 20 - Bloody Shirt Politics -- 21 - Centennial -- 22- Old Abe at Peace -- Notes -- Bibliography
Old Abe, the sweeping historical novel from New York Times bestselling author John Cribb, brings America’s greatest president to life the way no other book has before. Old Abe is the story of the last five years of Abraham Lincoln’s life, the most cataclysmic years in American history. We are at Lincoln’s side on every page as he presses forward amid disaster and fights to save the country. Beginning in the spring of 1860, the story follows Lincoln through his election and the calamity of the Civil War. During the war, he walks bloody battlefields in the North and the South. He peers down the Potomac River with a spyglass amid terrifying reports of approaching Confederate gunboats. Death stalks him: one summer evening, a would-be assassin fires a shot at him, and the bullet passes through his hat. At the White House, he weeps over the body of Willie, his second son to die in childhood. As he tries desperately to hold the Union together, he searches for a general who will fight and finds him at last in Ulysses S. Grant. Amid national and personal tragedy, he struggles to find meaning in the Civil War and bring freedom to Southern slaves. Central to this biographical novel is a love story—the story of Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln’s sometimes stormy yet devoted marriage. Mary’s strong will and ambition for her husband have helped drive him to the White House. But the presidency takes an awful toll on her, and she grows increasingly frightened and insecure. Lincoln watches helplessly as she becomes emotionally unstable, and he grasps for ways to support her. As Lincoln’s journey unfolds, Old Abe chronicles the final five, tumultuous years of his life until his eventual assassination at the height of power. Full of epic scenes from American history, such as the Gettysburg Address and the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation, it probes the character and spirit of America. Old Abe portrays Lincoln not only as a flesh-and-blood man, but a hero who embodies his country’s finest ideals, the hero who sets the United States on track to become a great nation.
Old Abe, a spirited bald eagle with legend-inspiring powers, was the Civil War's most famous mascot. This picture book account of Abe's adventures brings the battlefield to life as readers join Company C of the 8th Wisconsin Infantry Volunteers and experience the rigors of war, trusting Old Abe to be their guide and lift their spirits.
Now an Apple TV+ documentary, Lincoln's Dilemma. One of the Wall Street Journal's Ten Best Books of the Year | A Washington Post Notable Book | A Christian Science Monitor and Kirkus Reviews Best Book of 2020 Winner of the Gilder Lehrman Abraham Lincoln Prize and the Abraham Lincoln Institute Book Award "A marvelous cultural biography that captures Lincoln in all his historical fullness. . . . using popular culture in this way, to fill out the context surrounding Lincoln, is what makes Mr. Reynolds's biography so different and so compelling . . . Where did the sympathy and compassion expressed in [Lincoln's] Second Inaugural—'With malice toward none; with charity for all'—come from? This big, wonderful book provides the richest cultural context to explain that, and everything else, about Lincoln." —Gordon Wood, Wall Street Journal From one of the great historians of nineteenth-century America, a revelatory and enthralling new biography of Lincoln, many years in the making, that brings him to life within his turbulent age David S. Reynolds, author of the Bancroft Prize-winning cultural biography of Walt Whitman and many other iconic works of nineteenth century American history, understands the currents in which Abraham Lincoln swam as well as anyone alive. His magisterial biography Abe is the product of full-body immersion into the riotous tumult of American life in the decades before the Civil War. It was a country growing up and being pulled apart at the same time, with a democratic popular culture that reflected the country's contradictions. Lincoln's lineage was considered auspicious by Emerson, Whitman, and others who prophesied that a new man from the West would emerge to balance North and South. From New England Puritan stock on his father's side and Virginia Cavalier gentry on his mother's, Lincoln was linked by blood to the central conflict of the age. And an enduring theme of his life, Reynolds shows, was his genius for striking a balance between opposing forces. Lacking formal schooling but with an unquenchable thirst for self-improvement, Lincoln had a talent for wrestling and bawdy jokes that made him popular with his peers, even as his appetite for poetry and prodigious gifts for memorization set him apart from them through his childhood, his years as a lawyer, and his entrance into politics. No one can transcend the limitations of their time, and Lincoln was no exception. But what emerges from Reynolds's masterful reckoning is a man who at each stage in his life managed to arrive at a broader view of things than all but his most enlightened peers. As a politician, he moved too slowly for some and too swiftly for many, but he always pushed toward justice while keeping the whole nation in mind. Abe culminates, of course, in the Civil War, the defining test of Lincoln and his beloved country. Reynolds shows us the extraordinary range of cultural knowledge Lincoln drew from as he shaped a vision of true union, transforming, in Martin Luther King Jr.'s words, "the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood." Abraham Lincoln did not come out of nowhere. But if he was shaped by his times, he also managed at his life's fateful hour to shape them to an extent few could have foreseen. Ultimately, this is the great drama that astonishes us still, and that Abe brings to fresh and vivid life. The measure of that life will always be part of our American education.
In This Storied River, longtime journalist Dennis McCann takes us on an intimate tour of the Upper Mississippi—from Dubuque, Iowa, to the Minnesota headwaters, and dozens of places in between. Far more than a travel guide, This Storied River celebrates the Upper Mississippi’s colorful history and the unique role the river has played in shaping the Midwest.
Now, I’m sure you know lots about Abraham Lincoln, the sixteenth president of the United States. But what you might not know is that Abe would never have become president if it hadn’t been for Austin Gollaher. Learn the story of what really happened to Honest Abe when he was just a kid in this nonfiction picture book that's perfect for President's Day and every day! The year is 1816. Abe is only seven years old, and his pal, Austin Gollaher, is ten. Abe and Austin decide to journey down to Knob Creek. The water looks scary and deep, and Austin points out that they don’t know how to swim. Nevertheless, they decide to traverse it. I won’t tell you what happens, but let’s just say that our country wouldn’t be the same if Austin hadn’t been there to help his friend. An ALA-ALSC Notable Children’s Book A Booklist Editors’ Choice A Bulletin Blue Ribbon Book “Rewarding on many levels, this high-spirited picture book is an engaging example of metafiction for the younger set.” —Booklist, Starred “A lively, participatory tale. . . . This is a book you should add to your shelves.” —School Library Journal, Starred “It’s a winner.” —The Bulletin, Starred
THE LINCOLN BRIGADE The day after Christmas in 1936, a group of ninety-six Americans sailed from New York to help Spain defend its democratic government against fascism. Ultimately, twenty-eight hundred United States volunteers reached Spain to become the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. Few Lincolns had any military training. More than half were seriously wounded or died in battle. Most Lincolns were activists and idealists who had worked with and demonstrated for the homeless and unemployed during the Great Depression. They were poets and blue-collar workers, professors and students, seamen and journalists, lawyers and painters, Christians and Jews, blacks and whites. The Brigade was the first fully integrated United States army, and Oliver Law, an African American from Texas, was an early Lincoln commander. William Loren Katz and the late Marc Crawford twice traveled with the Brigade to Spain in the 1980s, interviewed surviving Lincolns on old battlefields, and obtained never-before-published documents and photographs for this book.
Discover 365 reasons to love America as you read the storied history of the United States. The fife and drum of history mark the time of each passing day. And within their cadence, personalities, conflicts, discoveries, ideas, and nations peal and fade. American history is no different. Best-selling author and educator Dr. William J. Bennett is a master of the story that is the United States. In The American Patriot's Almanac, Bennett distills the American drama into 365 entries--one for each day of the year, with stories including: the starving time of Jamestown during the Winter of 1609 the bloody argument of the Civil War the invention of items such as Teflon The stories in this book are part of what Abraham Lincoln called the “mystic chords of memory.” They are the symbols that define the essence of the United States, that mark its historic course, and connect its people. The American Patriot’s Almanac is a daily source of inspiration and information about the history, heroes, and achievements that sum up what this nation is all about.
