The American Civil War & Reconstruction
Whistlestop Bookshop’s first store opened in Gettysburg in 1985. Eventually, over 19 years there, our Civil War section grew to be three large wall cases. A disproportionate percentage of it, naturally, was about the battle of Gettysburg and biographies of those who fought there. In addition to this book selling experience, my southern upbringing and Army family life created a lifelong interest in the War Between the States and all of its complexities. It is an understandable national obsession, considering how the first half of our nation’s history contributed to its ferocity, and the second half of our history has been the struggle to live with and understand the consequences.
Bruce Catton: The Army of the Potomac Trilogy
Bruce Catton: The Army of the Potomac Trilogy
Library of America restores to print a masterpiece of Civil War history in a deluxe collector’s edition
Bruce Catton’s Army of the Potomac trilogy is a landmark of historical story-telling, one of the most popular and influential works ever written about the Civil War. And yet for decades it has been unavailable in full. Now, Library of America restores the entirety of this essential classic to print in a deluxe, single-volume collector’s edition, with full-color endpaper maps, and detailed notes and a newly-researched chronology of Catton’s life and career by acclaimed Civil War scholar Gary W. Gallagher.
Mr. Lincoln’s Army, the first book in the trilogy, describes the Army of the Potomac’s formation as the bulwark of the Union war effort as emerging friction between the army’s commanding general George McClellan and the Commander in Chief in Washington reaches a crisis in the wake of the deadly battle at Antietam.
Glory Road recounts the critical months between the autumn of 1862 and midsummer 1863, including the battles at Fredericksburg, Rappahannock and Chancellorsville which set the state for the costly Union victory as Gettysburg. Catton’s retelling of the story of Lincoln’s address at Gettysburg remains unrivalled.
In A Stillness of Appomattox, which won both Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, the Army of the Potomac, now under the driving command of Ulyssess S. Grant, finally gains the upper hand against Robert E. Lee, culminating in one of the most vividly drawn accounts of Lee’s final surrender.