William C. Davis

"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.

"In this chronicle we hear the real voices of the soldiers, nurses, farmers, laborers, slaves, and freed people who lived through America's most tragic conflict. The Civil War Chronicle is a collection of the letters, diaries, speeches, telegrams, newspaper accounts, and official battlefield reports penned by those people, both famous and anonymous, who felt compelled to record their experiences because they sensed that their lives were significant. Also included are hundreds of period images which, along with the carefully chosen yet highly eclectic accounts, help recapture the day-to-day texture of life during the Civil War at all levels of Union and Confederate society."--BOOK JACKET.

From the brilliant to the downright incompetent, this book takes a look at the men who commanded the armies of both North and South.

The daily routine, work and play of soldiers on both sides of the Civil War is discussed.

"William C. Davis, one of America's best Civil War historians, here offers a definitive portrait of the Confederacy unlike any that has come before. Drawing on decades of writing and research among an unprecedented number of archives, Look Away! tells the story of the Confederate States of America not simply as a military saga (although it is that), but rather as a full portrait of a society and incipient nation. The first history of the Confederacy in decades, the culmination of a great scholar's career, Look Away! combines politics, economics, and social history to set a new standard for its subject."--BOOK JACKET.

Three Roads to the Alamo is the definitive book about the lives of David Crockett, James Bowie, and William Barret Travis - the legendary frontiersmen and fighters who met their destiny at the Alamo in one of the most famous and tragic battles in American history - and about what really happened in that battle. Through tremendous research and with unprecedented access to Mexican military archives, Davis strips away the many layers of myth, legend, and fable that surrounded Crockett, Bowie, and Travis during their lives and, even more emphatically, after their deaths, portraying them as they really were - heroic and unheroic, of great stature and deeply flawed, law abiding and lawbreaking.