American Heritage (HighBridge)

Infinitely readable and absorbing, Bruce Catton's The Civil War is one of the most widely read general histories of the war available in a single volume. "America needed its great war of brothers," wrote Bruce Catton, "to weld in a terrible fire what had been and what might be. The story of the war needs retelling because it helped to change the future of the human race." The Civil War is America's great Iliad, and few would dispute that its outcome is evident in most social and political issues today. For a person seeking a single volume to serve as a captivating introduction and a dependable guide through all the maze of battles and issues of the Civil War, this is a book without parallel. Catton understood the Civil War, its participants and battles, and he unfolds it with skill and simplicity, from the early division of the North and South to the final surrender of the Confederate troops. Of all historians past and present, Bruce Catton ranks among the best.

Some of America's foremost historians-including James M. McPherson, Allan Nevins, and Stephen B. Oates-recount the extraordinary life of Abraham Lincoln in this collection of the best essays from sixty years of American Heritage. Lincoln, the book argues, ". . . evolved into nothing less than an apostle for the sanctity of the Union, the ethic of majority rule, and the dreams of freedom and equality of opportunity. Who could have so predicted when Lincoln had seemed the least qualified candidate for the presidency?"

Acclaimed historians Robert M. Utley and Wilcomb E. Washburn examine both small battles and major wars-from the Native rebellion of 1492 to Crazy Horse and the Sioux War to the massacre at Wounded Knee.

The air war over Europe during World War II proved that combat in the sky can be even more devastating than combat on the ground. When the war ended, every major city in Germany was virtually destroyed. A German writer admitted that his own nation, in taking up the sword to conquer the world, had "summoned up those bands of furies which raced across the German skies."