Drawing on the searing letters that Walt Whitman, his brother George, their mother Louisa, and their other brothers wrote to each other during the Civil War, this work chronicles the experience of an archetypal American family enduring its own long crisis alongside the anguish of the nation.

In 1861 Charley, a twelve-year-old drummer boy with the Army of the Potomac, is caught up in the excitement and horrors of the Civil War as he travels from Washington towards Antietam.

Friday, December 19, 1777, dawned cold and windy. Fourteen thousand Continental Army soldiers tramped from dawn to dusk along the rutted Pennsylvania roads from Gulph Mills to Valley Forge, the site of their winter encampment. The soldiers' arrival was followed by the army's wagons and hundreds of camp women. Following the Drum tells the story of the forgotten women who spent the winter of 1777-78 with the Continental Army at Valley Forge--from those on society's lowest rungs to ladies on the upper echelons. Impoverished and clinging to the edge of survival, many camp women were soldiers' wives who worked as the army's washers, nurses, cooks, and seamstresses. Other women at the encampment were of higher status: they traveled with George Washington's entourage when the army headquarters shifted locations and served the general as valued cooks, laundresses, or housekeepers. There were also the ladies at Valley Forge who were not subject to the harsh conditions of camp life and came and went as they and their husbands, Washington's generals and military advisers, saw fit. Nancy K. Loane uses sources such as issued military orders, pension depositions after the war, soldiers' descriptions, and some of the women's own diary entries and letters to bring these women to life.

Renowned master drummer Godwin Agbeli joins forces with ethnomusicologist Locke in this

“Haunted and haunting. . . . With fearlessness and humility, in a narrative that flows more artfully than ever between destruction and rebirth, Erdrich has opened herself to possibilities beyond what we merely see—to the dead alive and busy, to the breath of trees and the souls of wolves—and inspires readers to open their hearts to these mysteries as well.”— Washington Post Book World From the author of the National Book Award Winner The Round House, Louise Erdrich's breathtaking, lyrical novel of a priceless Ojibwe artifact and the effect it has had on those who have come into contact with it over the years. While appraising the estate of a New Hampshire family descended from a North Dakota Indian agent, Faye Travers is startled to discover a rare moose skin and cedar drum fashioned long ago by an Ojibwe artisan. And so begins an illuminating journey both backward and forward in time, following the strange passage of a powerful yet delicate instrument, and revealing the extraordinary lives it has touched and defined. Compelling and unforgettable, Louise Erdrich's Painted Drum explores the often-fraught relationship between mothers and daughters, the strength of family, and the intricate rhythms of grief with all the grace, wit, and startling beauty that characterizes this acclaimed author's finest work.

Walt Whitman's work as a nurse to the wounded soldiers of the Civil War had a profound effect on the way he saw the world. Much less well known is the extraordinary record of his younger brother, George, who led his men in twenty-one major battles, almost to die in a Confederate prison camp as the fighting ended. Drawing on the searing letters that Walt, George, their mother Louisa, and their other brothers, wrote to each other during the conflict, and on new evidence and new readings of the great poet, Now the Drum of War chronicles the experience of an archetypal American family-from rural Long Island to working-class Brooklyn-enduring its own long crisis alongside the anguish of the nation. Robert Roper has constructed a powerful narrative about America's greatest crucible, and a compelling story of our most original poet and one of our bravest soldiers. "Together, the brothers Whitman define the complementary aspects of a full human response to a catastrophe like the Civil War. One is on the side of nurturing and empathy, a lover-figure who becomes a tender friend or father; the other more in line with classical definitions of masculine virtue, a man who protects his fellow-fighters while resolutely destroying the enemy...The Whitmans did not arrive at their vocations independently, or out of nowhere; their family's stalwartness in terrible trials, especially their mother's, and their own continuing awareness of each other as the war darkened, year by year, for both of them, awoke in both a kind of greatness."

The history of the volunteer militia in Detroit is rich with heroic figures, tales of leadership, bravery, and camaraderie. Author Stanley Solvick provides a fascinating chronicle of the origins and development of Detroit's Light Guard. From their beginnings in Anglo-Saxon England, citizen-soldiers have served in defense of their communities. In the New World, early settlements, far from the mother country, utilized citizen-soldiers drawn from their own population to supplement the small forces of regular troops. Detroit's oldest militia unit, under the leadership of the city's founder, Antoine de la Mathe Cadillac, safeguarded the riverfront community from the area's Indian population. By 1830, a permanent volunteer militia had been organized in the region. Author Solvick details the Guards' origins, tracing their transformation from Brady's Guards to the Light Guard, their involvement in the Civil War, the Spanish-American War, the two World Wars, and their progression into the Space Age. In addition to encountering a number of individuals who shaped and guided the Light Guard in its evolution, readers will come across many whose names have become commonplace in present-day Detroit: Colonel Augustus B. Woodward and Governor Lewis B. Cass. Let the Drum Beat celebrates the Light Guard's tradition of service to the city of Detroit, the state, and the nation and provides a colorful new chapter to the rich history of the region.