The gripping story of six West Point graduates who fought each other in the Civil War.
With Civil War clouds darkening the horizon, they were strangers from different states thrown together as West Point cadets: George Armstrong Custer, Stephen Dodson Ramseur, Henry Algernon DuPont, John Pelham, Thomas Lafayette Rosser, and Wesley Merritt.
Right after their graduations, war erupted in 1861. They stayed blue or went gray, and even faced each other in battle. Acclaimed military historian Tom Carhart vividly brings to life these young men of valor and honor, and the valiant victories and crushing defeats of the war. They made their marks on the history of a new nation split apart, then reunited and reborn-but only at the cost of the blood of brothers.

The Battle of Gettysburg was one of America's pivotal moments. Union forces repelled the brilliant, seemingly unbeatable Robert E. Lee-just as he was poised to capture the nation's capital. History has held that Lee made one disastrous decision on the battle's last day-launching "Pickett's Charge" uphill across an open field against the heart of the Union defense. But why would he have employed only a fifth of his forces at such a crucial moment?
Tom Carhart offers a bold thesis-that Lee's real strategy was to combine Pickett's frontal attack with a daring rear assault to break the Union Army in half. But this second attack was stopped by a force half its size, led by the young, unproven General Custer, who helped turn the tide of the war. Destined to be controversial, this is a provocative, indispensable reassessment of a monumental battle.

In the fall of 1965, Army cadet Tom Carhart and five others at West Point Academy pulled off a feat of precision and ingenuity that made them famous: the theft of the Navy's Billy-Goat mascot from their rival academy, Annapolis, just before the biggest game of the year. With U.S. forces in Vietnam swollen to nearly 200,000 and American casualties steadily growing, it was an unnerving time to join the military. At West Point, the young men preparing to graduate the following June were well aware that they would be called upon to serve, and quite possibly die, in that far-off country where war raged. That November would be the last Army-Navy football game any of the six cadets would ever participate in, so they had to make it count. After an embarrassing theft of their mascot ten years earlier, the Navy went to extraordinary lengths to make sure it could never happen again. Formal agreements were made between the two superintendents, who subsequently threatened fire and brimstone to any of their charges who dared go near the other Academy. To reinforce those orders, during the week before The Big Game, the Navy placed their goat in an effectively impregnable lockup under 24/7 guard by U.S. Marines at an intimidating Naval Security Station--a modern day Golden Fleece. The Golden Fleece by Tom Carhart is the incredible true story, told by one of the participants, of how six West Point cadets in the Class of 1966 set out to steal that Golden Fleece, and how they succeeded against all odds. The Golden Fleece is a rollicking non-fiction military caper about a famous prank conducted by these cadets as their one last hurrah before shipping off to a war they might not come back from.