Shiloh: the battle that changed the Civil War

By Daniel, Larry J

Publishing Date: [1997]

Classification: 900

Call Number: 973.731 DAN

The Battle of Shiloh was fought in April 1862 on the banks of the Tennessee River in south central Tennessee. In two days of vicious combat more casualties were inflicted than in all of the rest of America's wars added together up to that time. Despite the bloody butcher's list, no land exchanged hands. The North was stunned to hear that one of its principal armies had been taken by surprise. The Federal commander, Major General Ulysses S. Grant, faced a storm of unanswered questions.

Ulysses S. Grant: the unlikely hero

By Korda, Michael

Publishing Date: ©2004

Classification: 900

Call Number: 973.8209 KOR

Challenges opinions about the Civil War general's presidency, explaining how Grant enabled the country to achieve a sense of post-war calm and applied constructive political strategies in favor of less effective occupation tactics.

NEW RELEASE

Enough

By Hutchinson, Cassidy

Publishing Date: 2023

Classification: 900

Call Number: 973.933 HUT

"Cassidy Hutchinson's desk was mere steps from the most controversial president in recent American history. Now, she provides a riveting account of her extraordinary experiences as an idealistic young woman thrust into the middle of a national crisis, where she risked everything to tell the truth about some of the most powerful people in Washington"--

Life on the Mississippi: an epic American adventure

By Buck, Rinker

Publishing Date: 2022

Classification: 900

Call Number: 977 BUC

"The eagerly awaited return of master American storyteller Rinker Buck, Life on the Mississippi is an epic, enchanting blend of history and adventure in which Buck builds a wooden flatboat from the grand 'flatboat era' of the 1800s and sails it down the Mississippi River, illuminating the forgotten past of America's first western frontier. Seven years ago, readers around the country fell in love with a singular American voice: Rinker Buck, whose infectious curiosity about history launched him across the West in a covered wagon pulled by mules and propelled his book about the trip, The Oregon Trail, to ten weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. Now, Buck returns to chronicle his latest incredible adventure: building a wooden flatboat from the bygone era of the early 1800s and journeying down the Mississippi River to New Orleans. A modern-day Huck Finn, Buck casts off down the river on the flatboat Patience accompanied by an eccentric crew of daring shipmates. Over the course of his voyage, Buck steers his fragile wooden craft through narrow channels dominated by massive cargo barges, rescues his first mate gone overboard, sails blindly through fog, breaks his ribs not once but twice, and camps every night on sandbars, remote islands, and steep levees. As he charts his own journey, he also delivers a richly satisfying work of history that brings to life a lost era. The role of the flatboat in our country's evolution is far more significant than most Americans realize. Between 1800 and 1840, millions of farmers, merchants, and teenage adventurers embarked from states like Pennsylvania and Virginia on flatboats headed beyond the Appalachians to Kentucky, Mississippi, and Louisiana. Like the Nile, the Thames, or the Seine before them, the western rivers in America became a floating supply chain that fueled national growth. Settler families repurposed the wood from their boats to build their first cabins in the wilderness; cargo boats were broken apart and sold to build the boomtowns along the water route. Joining the river traffic were floating brothels, called 'gun boats'; 'smithy boats' for blacksmiths; even 'whiskey boats' with taverns mounted on jaunty rafts. In the present day, America's inland rivers are a superhighway dominated by leviathan barges--carrying $80 billion of cargo annually--all descended from flatboats like the ramshackle Patience, which must avoid being crushed alongside their metal hulls. As a historian, Buck resurrects the era's adventurous spirit, but he also challenges familiar myths about American expansion, confronting the bloody truth behind settlers' push for land and wealth. The Indian Removal Act of 1830 forced more than 125,000 members of the Cherokee, Choctaw, and several other tribes to travel the Mississippi on a brutal journey en route to the barrens of Oklahoma. Simultaneously, almost a million enslaved African Americans were carried in flatboats and marched by foot 1,000 miles over the Appalachians to the cotton and cane fields of Arkansas, Mississippi, and Louisiana, birthing the term 'sold down the river.' Weaving together a tapestry of first-person histories, Buck portrays this watershed era of American expansion as it was really lived. With a rare narrative power that blends stirring adventure with absorbing untold history, Life on the Mississippi is a muscular and majestic feat of storytelling from a writer who may be the closest that we have today to Mark Twain."--

The man who beat Death Valley: based on the true story of William Lewis Manly

By Fox, Deborah A

Publishing Date: [2020]

Classification: 900

Call Number: 979.487 FOX

Unravels one of the most sensational pioneer stories of 19th century America. In the winter of 1849-1850, William Lewis Manly, John Rogers, Asahel and Sarah Bennett, and their pioneers got lost in the Great Basin Desert and stumbled into Death Valley. Defying starvation and danger, Manly and Rogers trekked a staggering 500 miles over murderous terrain to Los Angeles and back to Death Valley to save the trapped families