Stephen W. Sears

"On July 2, 1863, the second day of fighting at Gettysburg, Maj. Gen. Daniel E. Sickles, in an ill-conceived interpretation of his orders, advanced his men beyond the established Union line and exposed his flanks to a potentially devastating Confederate attack. Shortly after being reprimanded by his commander, Maj. Gen. George G. Meade, for endangering the entire Union Army. Sickles was hit by a cannonball. He returned to Washington with his leg amputated and his pride badly wounded." "A politician and lawyer prior to the war, Sickles was already notorious for being the first person in U.S. history acquitted of murder by pleading temporary insanity. During his recuperation in the nation's capital, Sickles defended his actions at Gettysburg to anyone who would listen, including President Lincoln, and criticized Meade before Congress's Committee on the Conduct of the War. He continued defending himself for years after the war, while Meade remained mostly silent on the subject." "Now, historian Richard A. Sauers destroys many commonly accepted myths about the controversy by examining the evidence in detail. In this fascinating analysis, he highlights the personality conflicts among military leaders that complicate combat. He also demonstrates that distortions, such as Sickles's version of Gettysburg, are frequently accepted as fact by historians and repeated for generations to come. Sauers shows that Sickles's unjust manipulations harmed Meade's reputation for years after the war."--Jacket.

WARFARE & DEFENCE. Inside AIR FORCE: Air forces of World War II - Fighter planes - Bombing runs - Escort duty - Key missions - Battle of Britain - Combat units - D-Day, plus much more! Get tough with some of World War II's fighting men and units. From battlefield frontlines to Naval convoys, from secret missions to aerial dogfights, Action Force brings together the people, weapons, vehicles, the stats and the facts in one all-action World War II series. You want action packed? Read Action Force! Ages 9+.

The Peninsula campaign of 1862 was the largest campaign of the Civil War. More men were assembled on the Virginia Peninsula for this battle for the capital of the Confederacy than for any other operation of the war. Now Stephen Sears, the award-winning author of Landscape Turned Red, provides the first complete, full-length account of the campaign ever written, a masterly narrative by one of our foremost historians. The Peninsula campaign was General George McClellan's. Grand scheme to advance from Yorktown up the Virginia Peninsula and destroy the Rebel army in its own capital. Though initially successful, McClellan's plans fell through at the gates of Richmond. Assuming command of the Confederate forces, Robert E. Lee split his army and proceeded to deliver a series of hammer blows against the Federals. Though the Confederates were not invariably victorious on the field, Lee's will to fight so surpassed McClellan's that in the end the. Union forces were expelled from the Peninsula. Weaving together narrative, military analysis, and firsthand testimony from the diaries and letters of Union and Confederate soldiers, Stephen Sears has crafted a magisterial history. It is at once a ground-breaking study of the great Civil War engagement, an unforgettable picture of men at war, and a sobering reflection of the role of individuals on the outcome of events.

By age 35, General George B. McClellan (1826-1885), designated the "Young Napoleon," was the commander of all the Northern armies. He forged the Army of the Potomac into a formidable battlefield foe, and fought the longest and largest campaign of the time as well as the single bloodiest battle in the nation's history. Yet, he also wasted two supreme opportunities to bring the Civil War to a decisive conclusion. In 1864 he challenged Abraham Lincoln as the Democratic candidate for the presidency. Neither an indictment nor an apologia, this biography draws entirely on primary sources to create a splendidly incisive portrait of this charismatic, controversial general who, for the first eighteen months of the conflict, held the fate of the union in his unsteady hands. - Publisher.

Of all the days on all the fields where American soldiers have fought, the most terrible was September 17, 1862. The Civil War battle waged on that date at Antietam Creek, Maryland, took a human toll never exceeded on any day in our nation's history. The battle at Antietam was pivotal to the course of the war, yet the complete story of this climactic and bitter struggle has never been told. In Landscape Turned Red, Stephen W. Sears draws on a wealth of newly discovered diaries, dispatches, and letters to recreate the vivid drama of Antietam -- and drama it is, pitting high-stakes military gambler Robert E. Lee against George B. McClellan, the general with every soldierly quality but one, the will to fight. Sears's subject is not just generals and their tactics, however; it is also the emotions and experiences of the men in the ranks, and their stories emerge here with powerful authenticity. With Landscape Turned Red, the literary successor of renowned historian Bruce Catton fills a major gap in Civil War literature and tells an engrossing, human tale of a momentous battle and the men who fought it. - Jacket flap.

There were other air wars fought during World War II-by Britons against Germans, by Germans against Russians, by Americans against Japanese, among others-but none was more dramatic nor more savage than America's air war against Germany. The air war over Europe proved to the world that havoc from the skies could be even more earth-shaking than any man could have dreamed. When the war ended every major city in Germany was in ruins. Of that destruction, and the aircraft that caused it, 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."

One of the most dramatic battles of the Civil War, Chancellorsville was Robert E. Lee's masterpiece. Outnumbered two to one, Lee violated a cardinal rule of military strategy by dividing his small army, sending Stonewall Jackson on his famous twelve-mile march around the Union flank. Charging out of the Wilderness with Rebel yells, Jackson's troops destroyed one entire corps of the Union army, and Lee drove the rest across the Rappahannock River. Lee's great victory came at great cost, however: Jackson, making a night reconnaissance, was accidentally shot by his own troops and died eight days later. And ironically, the momentum of Lee's greatest triumph pushed him to launch an aggressive campaign that led to his greatest defeat, at Gettysburg. Drawing on a wealth of new sources, including personal accounts by soldiers on both sides, Stephen Sears has written the definitive book on Chancellorsville.

From the moment the battle ended, Gettysburg was hailed as one of the greatest triumphs of the Union army. Celebrations erupted across the North as a grateful people cheered the victory. But Gabor Boritt turns our attention away from the rejoicing millions to the dark mood of the White House - where Lincoln cried in frustration as General Meade let the largest Confederate army escape safely into Virginia. Such unexpected portraits abound in Lincoln's Generals, as a team of distinguished historians probes beyond the popular anecdotes and conventional wisdom to offer a fascinating look at Lincoln's relationship with his commanders. In Lincoln's Generals, Boritt and his fellow contributors examine the interaction between the president and five key generals: McClellan, Hooker, Meade, Sherman, and Grant. In each chapter, the authors provide new insight into this mixed bag of officers and the president's tireless efforts to work with them. Even Lincoln's choice of generals was not as ill-starred as we think, writes Pulitzer Prize-winner Mark E. Neely, Jr.: compared to most Victorian-era heads of state, he had a fine record of selecting commanders (for example, the contemporary British gave us such bywords for incompetence as "the charge of the Light Brigade," while Napoleon III managed to lose the entire French army). But the president's relationship with his commanders in chief was never easy. In these pages, Stephen Sears underscores McClellan's perverse obstinancy as Lincoln tried everything to drive him ahead. Neely sheds new light on the president's relationship with Hooker, arguing that he was wrong to push the general to attack at Chancellorsville. Boritt writes about Lincoln's prickly relationship with the victor of Gettysburg, "old snapping turtle" George Meade. Michael Fellman reveals the political stress between the White House and William T. Sherman, a staunch conservative who did not want blacks in his army but who was crucial to the war effort. And John Y. Simon looks past the legendary camaraderie between Lincoln and Grant to reveal the tensions in their relationship. . Perhaps no other episode has been more pivotal in the nation's history than the Civil War - and yet so much of these massive events turned on a few distinctive personalities. Lincoln's Generals is a brilliant portrait that takes us inside the individual relationships that shaped the course of our most costly war.

Illustrations originally appeared in Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, published 1887-88.