Scholarly, judicious, clear, and unfailingly interesting.New York Times

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.

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. Of all historians past and present, Bruce Catton ranks among the best.

Bruce Catton (1899-1978), author and editor, is best known as a Civil War historian. Born in Petosky, Michigan, he spent most of his childhood in Benzonia, Michigan, where his father was a teacher and principal at Benzonia Academy. He later served in the navy and worked for newspapers and the federal government. At age fifty-one, he published his first Civil War book, Mr. Lincoln's Army. In 1954, the year he became the editor of American Heritage magazine, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his book A Stillness at Appomattox.