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A masterful biography of Lincoln that follows his bitter struggle with poverty, his self-made success in business and law, his early disappointing political career, and his leadership as President during one of America's most tumultuous periods.
Stephen B. Oates discerns the historical truth from the mythical legend that surrounds Lincoln in this original and fascinating portrait of America's 16th president.
The Whirlwind of War builds on the great themes and follows many of
the important figures who were introduced in The Approaching Fury.
Stephen B. Oates's riveting narrative brings to life the complex
and destructive war that is the central event in American history.
He writes in the first person, assuming the viewpoints of several
of the principal figures: the rival presidents, Abraham Lincoln and
Jefferson Davis; the rival generals, Robert E. Lee, Ulysses S.
Grant, and William Tecumseh Sherman; the great black abolitionist,
editor, and orator, Frederick Douglass; the young Union battlefield
nurse, Cornelia Hancock; the brilliant head of the Chicago Sanitary
Commission and cocreator of the northern Sanitary Fair, Mary
Livermore; the Confederate socialite and political insider, Mary
Boykin Chesnut; the assassin, John Wilkes Booth; and the greatest
poet of the era, Walt Whitman, who speaks in the coda about the
meaning of war and Lincoln's death.
When the Civil War broke out, Clara Barton wanted more than anything to be a Union soldier, an impossible dream for a thirty-nine-year-old woman, who stood a slender five feet tall. Determined to serve, she became a veritable soldier, a nurse, and a one-woman relief agency operating in the heart of the conflict. Now, award-winning author Stephen B. Oates, drawing on archival materials not used by her previous biographers, has written the first complete account of Clara Barton's active engagement in the Civil War. By the summer of 1862, with no institutional affiliation or official government appointment, but impelled by a sense of duty and a need to heal, she made her way to the front lines and the heat of battle. Oates tells the dramatic story of this woman who gave the world a new definition of courage, supplying medical relief to the wounded at some of the most famous battles of the war -- including Second Bull Run, Antietam, Fredericksburg, Battery Wagner, the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, and Petersburg. Under fire with only her will as a shield, she worked while ankle deep in gore, in hellish makeshift battlefield hospitals -- a bullet-riddled farmhouse, a crumbling mansion, a windblown tent. Committed to healing soldiers' spirits as well as their bodies, she served not only as nurse and relief worker, but as surrogate mother, sister, wife, or sweetheart to thousands of sick, wounded, and dying men. Her contribution to the Union was incalculable and unique. It also became the defining event in Barton's life, giving her the opportunity as a woman to reach out for a new role and to define a new profession. Nursing, regarded as a menial service before the war, became a trained, paid occupation after the conflict. Although Barton went on to become the founder and first president of the Red Cross, the accomplishment for which she is best known, A Woman of Valor convinces us that her experience on the killing fields of the Civil War was her most extraordinary achievement.
Winner of the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Book Award and the Christopher Award, this brilliant examination of the life of Martin Luther King, Jr. portrays a very real man and his dream that shaped America's history.
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Rip Ford’s Texas (Paperback)
John Salmon Ford; Edited by Stephen B. Oates
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R1,472
R1,389
Discovery Miles 13 890
Save R83 (6%)
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Ships in 12 - 17 working days
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The Republic of Texas was still in its first exultation over
independence when John Salmon "Rip" Ford arrived from South
Carolina in June of 1836. Ford stayed to participate in virtually
every major event in Texas history during the next sixty years.
Doctor, lawyer, surveyor, newspaper reporter, elected
representative, and above all, soldier and Indian fighter, Ford sat
down in his old age to record the events of the turbulent years
through which he had lived. Stephen Oates has edited Ford's memoirs
to produce a clear and vigorous personal history of Texas.
Another Confederate cavalry raid impends. You hear the snort of
an impatient horse, the leathery squeaking of saddles, the
low-voiced commands of officers, the muffled cluck of guns cocked
in preparation--then the sudden rush of motion, the din of another
attack.
This classic story seeks to illuminate a little-known theater of
the Civil War--the cavalry battles of the Trans-Mississippi West, a
region that included Missouri, Arkansas, Texas, the Indian
Territory, and part of Louisiana. Stephen B. Oates traces the
successes and defeats of the cavalry; its brief reinvigoration
under John S. "Rip" Ford, who fought and won the last battle of the
war at Palmetto Ranch; and finally, the disintegration of this
once-proud fighting force.
Biographer and historian Stephen B. Oates tells the story of the
coming of the American Civil War through the voices and
perspectives of thirteen principal players in the drama, from
Thomas Jefferson and Henry Clay in the Missouri crisis of 1820 down
to Stephen A. Douglas, Jefferson Davis, and Abraham Lincoln in the
final crisis of 1861. This innovative approach shows the crucial
role that perception of events played in the sectional hostilities
that pushed the United States irreversibly toward a national
calamity. Nat Turner, William Lloyd Garrison, John C. Calhoun,
Frederick Douglass, Harriet Beecher Stowe, George Fitzhugh, John
Brown, and Mary Boykin Chesnut also provide perspectives. Each
character takes a turn onstage, narrating critical events in which
he or she was a major participant or eyewitness. For the dramatic
monologues, Oates draws on the actual words of his speakers-in
letters, speeches, interviews, recollections, and other recorded
utterances-and then simulates how, were they reminiscing aloud,
they would describe these events in which they were the principal
actors or witnesses. All the events and themes reflect the
historical record.
This volume is concerned exclusively with biography as a narrative
art, comprising essays by ten people who have actually practiced
the form.
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