While Maj. Samuel Peter Heintzelman, one of the most cultured, dedicated, and respected officers in the antebellum frontier army, was at Camp Verde on September 28, 1859, Juan Nepomuceno Cortina sent shock waves throughout Texas by brazenly leading some seventy-five angry raiders into the streets of Brownsville and initiated a war that would reverberate north to Austin and beyond to the halls of Washington and Mexico City. Heintzelman's journal provides a detailed and vivid account of the battles at El Ebonal and Rio Grande City. Heintzelman's impressions of his senior commander, Col. Robert E. Lee, are also noteworthy.

While Maj. Samuel Peter Heintzelman, one of the most cultured, dedicated, and respected officers in the antebellum frontier army, was at Camp Verde on September 28, 1859, Juan Nepomuceno Cortina sent shock waves throughout Texas by brazenly leading some seventy-five angry raiders into the streets of Brownsville and initiated a war that would reverberate north to Austin and beyond to the halls of Washington and Mexico City. Heintzelman's journal provides a detailed and vivid account of the battles at El Ebonal and Rio Grande City. Heintzelman's impressions of his senior commander, Col. Robert E. Lee, are also noteworthy.

Documents the author's traditional childhood north of the Arctic Circle, his education in the continental U.S., and his lobbying efforts that convinced the government to allocate resources to Alaska's natives in compensation for incursions on their way of life.

BY THE AUTHOR OF INTERSTATE, WINNER OF THE STANFORD DOLMAN TRAVEL BOOK OF THE YEAR Ten years after breaking a world record for cycling around the world, award-winning travel writer Julian Sayarer returns to two wheels on the roads of Israel and occupied Palestine. His route weaves from the ancient hills of Galilee, along the blockaded walls of the Gaza Strip and down to the Bedouin villages of the Naqab Desert. He speaks with Palestinian hip-hop artists who wonder if music can change their world, Israelis hoping that kibbutz life can, and Palestinian cycling clubs determined to keep on riding despite the army checkpoints and settlers that bar their way. Pedalling through a military occupation, in the chance encounters of the roadside, a bicycle becomes a vehicle of more than just travel, and cuts through the tension to find a few simple truths, and some hope. As the miles pass, the journey becomes a meditation on making change - how people in dark times keep their spirit, and go on believing that a different world is possible.

General John A. Wickham, commander of the famous 101st Airborne Division in the 1970s and subsequently Army Chief of Staff, once visited Antietam battlefield. Gazing at Bloody Lane where, in 1862, several Union assaults were brutally repulsed before they finally broke through, he marveled, "You couldn't get American soldiers today to make an attack like that." Why did those men risk certain death, over and over again, through countless bloody battles and four long, awful years ? Why did the conventional wisdom -- that soldiers become increasingly cynical and disillusioned as war progresses -- not hold true in the Civil War? It is to this question--why did they fight--that James McPherson, America's preeminent Civil War historian, now turns his attention. He shows that, contrary to what many scholars believe, the soldiers of the Civil War remained powerfully convinced of the ideals for which they fought throughout the conflict. Motivated by duty and honor, and often by religious faith, these men wrote frequently of their firm belief in the cause for which they fought: the principles of liberty, freedom, justice, and patriotism. Soldiers on both sides harkened back to the Founding Fathers, and the ideals of the American Revolution. They fought to defend their country, either the Union--"the best Government ever made"--or the Confederate states, where their very homes and families were under siege. And they fought to defend their honor and manhood. "I should not lik to go home with the name of a couhard," one Massachusetts private wrote, and another private from Ohio said, "My wife would sooner hear of my death than my disgrace." Even after three years of bloody battles, more than half of the Union soldiers reenlisted voluntarily. "While duty calls me here and my country demands my services I should be willing to make the sacrifice," one man wrote to his protesting parents. And another soldier said simply, "I still love my country." McPherson draws on more than 25,000 letters and nearly 250 private diaries from men on both sides. Civil War soldiers were among the most literate soldiers in history, and most of them wrote home frequently, as it was the only way for them to keep in touch with homes that many of them had left for the first time in their lives. Significantly, their letters were also uncensored by military authorities, and are uniquely frank in their criticism and detailed in their reports of marches and battles, relations between officers and men, political debates, and morale. For Cause and Comrades lets these soldiers tell their own stories in their own words to create an account that is both deeply moving and far truer than most books on war. Battle Cry of Freedom, McPherson's Pulitzer Prize-winning account of the Civil War, was a national bestseller that Hugh Brogan, in The New York Times, called "history writing of the highest order." For Cause and Comrades deserves similar accolades, as McPherson's masterful prose and the soldiers' own words combine to create both an important book on an often-overlooked aspect of our bloody Civil War, and a powerfully moving account of the men who fought it.

A collection of more than one hundred photographs depicting the rugged, beautiful landscape of northern Nevada and its fabled ranch culture is accompanied by an essay discussing the rhythms of the land and life on the Dufurrena family ranch.