The Mississippi battle between Grant’s and Pemberton’s forces that sealed Vicksburg’s fate. The Battle of Champion Hill was the decisive land engagement of the Vicksburg Campaign. The fighting on May 16, 1863, took place just twenty miles east of the river city, where the advance of Gen. Ulysses S. Grant’s Federal army attacked Lt. Gen. John C. Pemberton’s hastily gathered Confederates. The bloody fighting seesawed back and forth until superior Union leadership broke apart the Southern line, sending Pemberton’s army into headlong retreat. The victory on Mississippi’s wooded hills sealed the fate of both Vicksburg and her large field army, propelled Grant into the national spotlight, and earned him the command of the entire US armed forces. Timothy Smith, a historian for the National Park Service, has written the definitive account of this long-overlooked battle. This book, winner of a nonfiction prize from the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters, is grounded upon years of primary research, rich in analysis and strategic and tactical action, and a compelling read.

During the Civil War, Sylvanus Cadwallader, a war correspondent employed first by the Chicago Times and later for the New York Herald, was attached to General Grant’s headquarters from 1862 to 1865. Three Years with Grant is his account of that period. As a portrait of Grant, the personality and the military leader, as a civilian’s picture of how the war was fought at the command level, and, above all, as a hitherto unknown primary source of Civil War history, as a hitherto unknown primary source of Civil War history, this is an important book. It is also an extremely entertaining one that makes an exciting reading. Entertaining because Cadwallader was a shrewd and stubborn man who was remarkably frank about his contemporaries and who was continually in trouble with all authority except Grant himself; exciting because he was a superb reporter in a unique position. Cadwallader had privileges and information accessible to no other journalist. Through his eyes—and, indirectly, Grant’s—the reader experiences the Vicksburg and Chattanooga campaigns; the actions of the Army of the Potomac; Grant and Lincoln at City Point; Grant and Sherman hatching strategy; Grant and Lee at Appomattox. The manuscript of Three Years with Grant, never published, was acquired some years ago by the Illinois State Historical Library; probably not more than a half- dozen living persons have read it. Now it has been ably edited, with an introduction and extensive notes, by Benjamin P. Thomas, whose Abraham Lincoln is generally regarded as the best one-volume life of the President yet written.

Phil Hill, famous racing driver of the 1950s and 1960s, describes his years driving Ferraris, the cars and people involved, and provides an insider's view of the races of the era.

In the 19th century, one of the surest ways to rise to prominence in American society was to be a war hero, like Andrew Jackson and William Henry Harrison. But few would have predicted such a destiny for Hiram Ulysses Grant, who had been a career soldier with little experience in combat and a failed businessman when the Civil War broke out in 1861. However, while all eyes were fixed on the Eastern theater at places like Manassas, Richmond, the Shenandoah Valley and Antietam, Grant went about a steady rise up the ranks through a series of successes in the West. His victory at Fort Donelson, in which his terms to the doomed Confederate garrison earned him the nickname "Unconditional Surrender" Grant, could be considered the first major Union victory of the war, and Grant's fame and rank only grew after that at battlefields like Shiloh and Vicksburg. Along the way, Grant nearly fell prey to military politics and the belief that he was at fault for the near defeat at Shiloh, but President Lincoln famously defended him, remarking, "I can't spare this man. He fights." Lincoln's steadfastness ensured that Grant's victories out West continued to pile up, and after Vicksburg and Chattanooga, Grant had effectively ensured Union control of the states of Kentucky and Tennessee, as well as the entire Mississippi River. At the beginning of 1864, Lincoln put him in charge of all federal armies, and he led the Army of the Potomac against Robert E. Lee in the Overland campaign, the siege of Petersburg, and famously, the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia at Appomattox. Although Grant was instrumental in winning the war and eventually parlayed his fame into two terms in the White House, his legacy and accomplishments are still the subjects of heavy debate today. His presidency is remembered mostly due to rampant fraud within his Administration, although he was never personally accused of wrongdoing, and even his victories in the Civil War have been countered by charges that he was a butcher. Like the other American Legends, much of Grant's personal life has been eclipsed by the momentous battles and events in which he participated, from Fort Donelson to the White House.

Ten years after a one-loss season and being ranked third in the nation, the University of Pittsburgh's historic football team had fallen on hard times. In 1973, the team hired former All-American Johnny Majors to right the ship, and he promptly recruited Tony Dorsett and Al Romano. Over the next four years, the new-look Panthers were brought back to prominence with stunning victories, culminating in the 1976 NCAA National Championship. Dorsett, a future Pro Football Hall of Famer, became the first college running back to eclipse two thousand yards in a season and was awarded the Heisman Trophy in the championship year. Author David Finoli tells the story of one of the most dramatic turnarounds in college football history.