#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The author of The Splendid and the Vile brings to life the pivotal five months between the election of Abraham Lincoln and the start of the Civil War in this “riveting reexamination of a nation in tumult” (Los Angeles Times).

“A feast of historical insight and narrative verve . . . This is Erik Larson at his best, enlivening even a thrice-told tale...

In the early days of photography, in the death-strewn wake of the Civil War, one man seized Americas imagination. A "spirit photographer," William Mumler took portrait photographs that featured the ghostly presence of a lost loved one alongside the living subject. Mumler was a sensation: The affluent and influential came calling. Peter Manseau brilliantly captures a nation wracked with grief and hungry for proof of the existence of ghosts and for...

"The bestselling authors of The First Conspiracy, which covers the secret plot against George Washington, now turn their attention to a little-known, but true story about a failed assassination attempt on President Lincoln 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...

"The dramatic true story of the champion Thoroughbred racehorse who gained international fame in the tumultuous, Civil War-era South, despite going nearly blind, and became the most successful sire in American racing history. The early days of American horse-racing were grueling. Four-mile heats-races four miles long, run two or three times in succession!-were the norm, rewarding horses who possessed the ideal combination of stamina and speed, attributes...

"From Bret Baier comes a riveting reassessment of Ulysses S. Grant, arguing that the great Civil War commander's battle to save the Union continued to the very end of his presidency when a crisis threatened to fracture the still fragile nation once again"-- Provided by publisher.

A groundbreaking account of Sherman's March to the Sea—the critical Civil War campaign that destroyed the Confederacy—told for the first time from the perspective of the tens of thousands of enslaved people who fled to the Union lines and transformed Sherman's march into the biggest liberation event in American history.
In the fall of 1864, Gen. William T. Sherman led his army through Atlanta, Georgia, burning buildings of military...

Describes the three day battle at Gettysburg, Pa. that was the turning point of the Civil War.