James McPherson

Filled with fresh interpretations and information, puncturing old myths and challenging new ones, this fast-paced narrative fully integrates the political, social, and military events that crowded the two decades from the outbreak of one war in Mexico to the ending of another at Appomattox. Packed with drama and analytical insight, the book vividly recounts the momentous episodes that preceded the Civil War: the Dred Scott decision, the Lincoln-Douglas...

McPherson recounts how the Union navy's blockade of the Confederate coast, leaky as a sieve in the war's early months, became increasingly effective as it choked off vital imports and exports. Meanwhile, the Confederate navy, dwarfed by its giant adversary, demonstrated daring and military innovation

In this compelling biography, McPherson follows Abraham Lincoln from his early frontier days through his turbulent years in the White House. Roused to action by the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, Lincoln joins the fledgling Republican Party. Running for U.S. Senate in 1858, he challenges Illinois Senator Stephen Douglas to a series of debates. Although Lincoln loses the race, his verbal jousts with Douglas give him the national attention necessary for...

"Winner of the Warren F. Kuehl Prize, Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations" James M. McPherson is the George Henry Davis '86 Professor of History Emeritus at Princeton University. His many books include the Pulitzer Prize-winning Battle Cry of Freedom and the New York Times bestseller Crossroads of Freedom. Originally published in 1964, The Struggle for Equality presents an incisive and vivid look at the abolitionist movement and...

Espacio vital -publicado originalmente como Elbow Room en 1977- es el epítome de lo que James Alan McPherson significó para la literatura de su tiempo, que es también el nuestro. Ser un escritor negro en los Estados Unidos marcó tanto la escritura de McPherson como la percepción que de él tuvo el mundillo literario que le tocó vivir, un mundillo en el que, a golpe de codazos, supo abrirse un espacio vital donde permitirse ser auténtico. Los...

General John A. Wickham, commander of the famous 101st Airborne Division in the 1970s and subsequently Army Chief of Staff, once visited Antietam battlefield. Gazing at Bloody Lane where, in 1862, several Union assaults were brutally repulsed before they finally broke through, he marveled, "You couldn't get American soldiers today to make an attack like that." Why did those men risk certain death, through countless bloody battles and four long, awful...

Twelve short stories, including "Why I Like Country Music," "The Silver Bullet," "Problems of Art," "Widows and Orphans," and "A Sense of Story."

"In The Long Shadow of War, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian James M. McPherson considers why the Civil War retains such a hold on our national psyche and identity. Though the drama and tragedy of the subject, from the war's scope and size--an estimated death toll of 750,000, far more than all the rest of the country's wars combined--to the nearly mythical individuals involved--Abraham Lincoln, Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson--help explain why the...