When Union and Confederate forces squared off along Bull Run on July 21, 1861, the Federals expected this first major military campaign would bring an early end to the Civil War. But when Confederate troops launched a strong counterattack, both sides realized the war would be longer and costlier than anticipated. First Bull Run, or First Manassas, set the stage for four years of bloody conflict that forever changed the political, social, and economic fabric of the nation. It also introduced the commanders, tactics, and weaponry that would define the American way of war through the turn of the twentieth century.
This crucial campaign receives its most complete and comprehensive treatment in Edward G. Longacre's "The Early Morning of War." A magisterial work by a veteran historian, "The Early Morning of War" blends narrative and analysis to convey the full scope of the campaign of First Bull Run--its drama and suspense as well as its practical and tactical underpinnings and ramifications. Also woven throughout are biographical sketches detailing the backgrounds and personalities of the leading commanders and other actors in the unfolding conflict.
Longacre has combed previously unpublished primary sources, including correspondence, diaries, and memoirs of more than four hundred participants and observers, from ranking commanders to common soldiers and civilians affected by the fighting. In weighing all the evidence, Longacre finds correctives to long-held theories about campaign strategy and battle tactics and questions sacrosanct beliefs--such as whether the Manassas Gap Railroad was essential to the Confederate victory. Longacre shears away the myths and persuasively examines the long-term repercussions of the Union's defeat at Bull Run, while analyzing whether the Confederates really had a chance of ending the war in July 1861 by seizing Washington, D.C.
Brilliant moves, avoidable blunders, accidents, historical forces, personal foibles: all are within Longacre's compass in this deftly written work that is sure to become the standard history of the first, critical campaign of the Civil War.

Of the three physicians at the Battle of the Little Big Horn, Doctor George Edwin Lord (1846-76) was the lone commissioned medical officer, an assistant surgeon with the United States Army's 7th Cavalry-one more soldier caught up in the U.S. government's efforts to fulfill what many people believed was the young country's "Manifest Destiny." A Life Cut Short at the Little Big Horn tells Lord's story for the first time. Notable for its unique angle on Custer's last stand and for its depiction of frontier-era medicine, the book is above all a compelling portrait of the making of an army medical professional in mid-nineteenth-century America. Drawing on newly discovered documents, Todd E. Harburn describes Lord's education and training at Bowdoin College in Maine and the Chicago Medical College, detailing what the study of medicine entailed at the time for "a young man of promise . . . held in universal esteem." Lord's time as a contract physician with the army took him in 1874 to the U.S. Northern Boundary Survey. From there Harburn recounts how, after a failed romance and the rigors of the U.S. Army Medical Board examination, the young doctor proceeded to his first-and only-appointment as a post surgeon, at Fort Buford in Dakota Territory. What followed, of course, was Lord's service, and his death, in the Little Big Horn campaign, which this book shows us for the first time from the unique perspective of the surgeon. A portrait of a singular figure in the milieu of the American military's nineteenth-century medical elite, A Life Cut Short at the Little Big Horn offers a close look at a familiar chapter in U.S. history, and a reminder of the humanity lost in a battle that resonates to this day.

In the late fourteenth century, the medieval Crown of Aragon experienced a series of food crises that created conflict and led to widespread starvation. Adam Franklin-Lyons applies contemporary understandings of complex human disasters, vulnerability, and resilience to explain how these famines occurred and to describe more accurately who suffered and why. Shortage and Famine in the Late Medieval Crown of Aragon details the social causes and responses to three events of varying magnitude that struck the western Mediterranean: the minor food shortage of 1372, the serious but short-lived crisis of 1384-85, and the major famine of 1374-76, the worst famine of the century in the region. Shifts in military action, international competition, and violent attempts to control trade routes created systemic panic and widespread starvation-which in turn influenced decades of economic policy, social practices, and even the course of geopolitical conflicts, such as the War of the Two Pedros and the papal schism in Italy. Providing new insights into the intersecting factors that led to famine in the fourteenth-century Mediterranean, this deeply researched, convincingly argued book presents tools and models that are broadly applicable to any historical study of vulnerabilities in the human food supply. It will be of interest to scholars of medieval Iberia and the medieval Mediterranean as well as to historians of food and of economics.

The Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument is the site of one of America's most famous armed struggles, but the events surrounding Custer's defeat there in 1876 are only the beginning of the story. As park custodians, American Indians, and others have contested how the site should be preserved and interpreted for posterity, the Little Bighorn has turned into a battlefield in more ways than one. In Stricken Field, one of America's foremost military historians offers the first comprehensive history of the site and its administration in more than half a century.Jerome A. Greene has produced a compelling account of one of the West's most hallowed and controversial attractions, beginning with the battle itself and ending with the establishment of an American Indian memorial early in the twenty-first century. Chronicling successive efforts of the War Department and the National Park Service to oversee the site, Greene describes the principal issues that have confounded its managers, from battle observances and memorials to ongoing maintenance, visitor access, and public use. Stricken Field is a cautionary tale. Greene elucidates the conflict between the Park Service's dual mission to provide public access while preserving the integrity of a historical resource. He also traces the complex events surrounding the site, including Indian protests in the 1970s and 1980s that ultimately contributed to the 2003 dedication of a monument finally recognizing the Lakotas, Northern Cheyennes, and other American Indians who fought there.

Lew Wallace (1827-1905) won fame for his novel, Ben-Hur, and for his negotiations with William H. Bonney, aka Billy the Kid, during the Lincoln County Wars of 1878-81. He was a successful lawyer, a notable Indiana politician, and a capable military administrator. And yet, as history and his own memoir tell us, Wallace would have traded all these accolades for a moment of military glory in the Civil War to save the Union. Where previous accounts have sought to discredit or defend Wallace's performance as a general in the war, author Christopher R. Mortenson takes a more nuanced approach. Combining military biography, historical analysis, and political insight, Politician in Uniform provides an expanded and balanced view of Wallace's military career - and offers the reader a new understanding of the experience of a voluntary general like Lew Wallace. A rising politician from Indiana, Wallace became a Civil War general through his political connections. While he had much success as a regimental commander, he ran into trouble at the brigade and division levels. A natural rivalry and tension between West Pointers and political generals might have accounted for some of these difficulties, but many, as Mortenson shows us, were of Wallace's own making. A temperamental officer with a ""rough"" conception of manhood, Wallace often found his mentors wanting, disrespected his superiors, and vigorously sought opportunities for glorious action in the field, only to perform poorly when given the chance. Despite his flaws, Mortenson notes, Wallace contributed both politically and militarily to the war effort - in the fight for Fort Donelson and at the Battle of Shiloh, in the defense of Cincinnati and southern Indiana, and in the administration of Baltimore and the Middle Department. Detailing these and other instances of Wallace's success along with his weaknesses and failures, Mortenson provides an unusually thorough and instructive picture of this complicated character in his military service. His book clearly demonstrates the unique complexities of evaluating the performance of a politician in uniform.