One of the greatest works of American autobiography, in a definitive Library of America text: Published seven years after his escape from slavery, "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave" (1845) is a powerful account of the cruelty and oppression of the Maryland plantation culture into which Frederick Douglass was born. It brought him to the forefront of the antislavery movement and drew thousands, black and white, to the cause....

"A harrowing memoir about one of the darkest periods in American history. Born a free man in New York, Solomon Northup was abducted in Washington, D.C., in 1841 and spent the next twelve years of his life in captivity as a slave on a Louisiana cotton plantation. After his rescue, he published this exceptionally vivid and detailed account of slave life--perhaps the best written of all the slave narratives. It became an immediate bestseller and today...

Jane McKeene was born two days before the dead began to walk the battlefields of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania-- derailing the War Between the States and changing the nation forever. Now laws like the Native and Negro Education Act require certain children attend combat schools to learn to put down the dead. Jane is studying to become an Attendant, trained in both weaponry and etiquette to protect the well-to-do. But it's not a life Jane wants. When families...

"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...

"Miss Z, a mysterious billionaire and a collector of rare photographs, is sending her four recruits back in time on a mission to capture, for the first time, one of the most important moments in American history--Abraham Lincoln giving his famous Gettysburg address"--

"From the National Book Award-winning and best-selling author Timothy Egan comes the epic story of one of the most fascinating and colorful Irishman in nineteenth-century America. The Irish-American story, with all its twists and triumphs, is told through the improbable life of one man. A dashing young orator during the Great Famine of the 1840s, in which a million of his Irish countrymen died, Thomas Francis Meagher led a failed uprising against...

Describes disgusting details about daily life for soldiers during the Civil War, including housing, food, and sanitation.

"Portrait of Lee as a brilliant general, a devoted family man, and principled gentleman who disliked slavery and disagreed with secession, yet who refused command of the Union Army in 1861 because he could not "draw his sword" against his beloved Virginia. Well-rounded and realistic, Clouds of Glory analyzes Lee's command during the Civil War and explores his responsibility for the fatal stalemate at Antietam, his defeat at Gettysburg (as well the...

More than two months after Robert E. Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia on April 9, 1865, the New York Times reported a most surprising piece of news. On May 12-13, the last battle of the Civil War had been fought at the southernmost tip of Texas—resulting in a Confederate victory. Although Palmetto Ranch did nothing to change the war's outcome, it added the final irony to a conflict replete with ironies, unexpected successes,

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When a schoolgirl gets separated from her tour of the White House and finds herself in the Lincoln bedroom, she also discovers the ghost of the great man himself.