Why did Abraham Lincoln sneak into Washington for his inauguration? was the Gettysburg Address written on the back of an envelope? Where did the Underground Railroad run? Did General Sherman really say, "War is Hell"?

If you can't answer these questions, you're not alone. Millions of Americans, bored by dull textbooks, are in the dark about the most significant event in our history. Now New York Times bestselling author Kenneth C. Davis comes to the rescue, deftly sorting out the players, the politics, and the key events - Emancipation and Reconstruction, Shiloh and Gettysburg, Generals Grant and Lee, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and much more. Drawing on moving eyewitness accounts, Davis includes a wealth of "hidden history" about the roles played by women and African Americans before and during the war, along with lesser-known facts that will enthrall even learned Civil War buffs. Vivid, informative, and hugely entertaining, Don't Know Much About the Civil War is the only book you'll ever need on "the war that never ended."

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Longacre has combed previously unpublished primary sources, including correspondence, diaries, and memoirs of more than four hundred participants and observers, from ranking commanders to common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.