Illustrated text, letters and diary excerpts follow the fictional Abbots in Ohio, whose son fights for the Union, and their relatives in Tennessee, who support the Confederacy, during the civil War.

Richard Serrano, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist for the Los Angeles Times, pens a story of two veterans. In the late 1950s, as America prepared for the Civil War centennial, two very old men lay dying. Albert Woolson, 109 years old, slipped in and out of a coma at a Duluth, Minnesota, hospital, his memories as a Yankee drummer boy slowly dimming. Walter Williams, at 117 blind and deaf and bedridden in his daughter's home in Houston, Texas, no longer could tell of his time as a Confederate forage master. The last of the Blue and the Gray were drifting away; an era was ending. Unknown to the public, centennial officials, and the White House too, one of these men was indeed a veteran of that horrible conflict and one according to the best evidence nothing but a fraud. One was a soldier. The other had been living a great, big lie.

Illustrated text, letters, and diary excerpts follow the fictional Abbotts in Ohio, whose son fights for the Union, and their relatives in Tennessee, who support the Confederacy, during the Civil War.

This unconventional culinary history explores the campfire experiences shared by soldiers on both sides of the Civil War and includes recipes commonly used on the battlefield.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., led the black drive for civil rights, but the changes he sought came largely in legal opinions issues by federal judges. Foremost of these was Frank Minis Johnson, Jr., of Montgomery, Alabama, who presided over some of the most emotional hearings and trials of the rights movement—hearings brimming with dramatic and poignant testimony from the black people who cried out for the freedoms that are the legacy of all Americans. Beginning with Judge Johnson’s coming-of-age in the hill country of Winston County, Alabama, this book covers many of his notable cases: the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the Freedom Rides, school desegregation, the Selma-to-Montgomery march, and the night-rider slaying of Viola Liuzzo, as well as Johnson’s work for prisoners, women, and the mentally ill. Much of the book is comprised of interviews and direct quotes from Johnson himself, making this recounting of Judge Johnson’s life dynamically autobiographical. Includes a new introduction and afterward by the author, Frank Sikora.

Charles Langston was four when his parents died and he went to live with his Aunt Sophie. He met Ben Dunn and Ellie Sorenson And The three forged friendships that would last their lifetimes. Charles and Ben fought with General Jackson at the Battle of New Orleans, and when they returned home it was with script awarding them a tract of land in Mississippi. They set about turning that wild land into a beautiful and productive plantation. Charles and Ellie married and had a son, Charles Matthew, Jr. (Matt). Ben married a beautiful woman from New Orleans and they had a daughter named Megan. In due time, Megan and Matt married and life was idyllic until the Civil War intervened to destroy an entire way of life. The South was stripped of its wealth and dignity And The Langstons faced losing everything they owned To The carpetbaggers. Matt went to Texas to look for land, and Megan managed to sell cotton that her father-in-law, Charles, had stored up before the War. She then sold the plantation and moved with their sons, Charles Matthew, III (Trey) and Patrick (Bubba), To the ranch Matt had purchased in Texas. During this time Megan met Salem McCord, and was drawn to him so strongly that she was terrified of the intensity of her feelings, and that she might do something to dishonor her family. Salem was a man of honor, and though he was very much in love with Megan, he, too, understood that they could only be friends.