Ulric Dahlgren was a brilliant, ambitious young man who became the youngest full colonel in the United States Army at the age of twenty-one, yet died before his twenty-second birthday. This is the first biography of Dahlgren, and thankfully it was penned by cavalry expert and award-winning author Eric J. Wittenberg. Wittenberg’s account chronicles Dahlgren’s full life story, with a deep look at his military career and extensive connections within the nation’s capital, all of which led to the climax of his life: the notorious Dahlgren Raid. Like a Meteor Burning Brightly: The Short but Controversial Life of Colonel Ulric Dahlgren is based upon a plethora of source material, including previously unknown or little-used archival sources. Anyone interested in the Civil War in general, or just a fascinating life well-told, will want this book on their shelf.

After the unprecedented violence of the 1864 Overland Campaign, Union Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant turned his gaze south of Richmond to Petersburg, and the key railroad junction that supplied the Confederate capital and its defenders. Nine grueling months of constant maneuver and combat around the “Cockade City” followed. As massive fortifications soon dominated the landscape, both armies frequently pushed each other to the brink of disaster. As March 1865 drew to a close, Grant planned one more charge against Confederate lines. Despite recent successes, many viewed this latest task as an impossibility—and their trepidation had merit. “These lines might well have been looked upon by the enemy as impregnable,” admitted Union Maj. Gen. Horatio G. Wright, “and nothing but the most resolute bravery could have overcome them.” Grant ordered the attack for April 2, 1865, setting the stage for a dramatic early morning bayonet charge by his VI Corps across half a mile of open ground into the “strongest line of works ever constructed in America.” Dawn of Victory: Breakthrough at Petersburg by Edward S. Alexander tells the story of the men who fought and died in the decisive battle of the Petersburg campaign. Readers can follow the footsteps of the resolute Union attackers and stand in the shoes of the obstinate Confederate defenders as their actions decided the fate of the nation.

The award-winning Civil War historian examines the actions of Union Cavalry on the first day of the Battle of Chickamauga in this history and tour guide. This volume provides an in-depth study of the two important delaying actions conducted by mounted Union soldiers at Reed’s and Alexander’s bridges on the first day of Chickamauga. Much like Eric J, Wittenberg’s “The Devil’s to Pay”: John Buford at Gettysburg—which won the Gettysburg Civil War Roundtable’s 2015 Book Award—this volume combines engaging military history with a detailed walking and driving tour complete with the GPS coordinates. On September, 18, 1863, a cavalry brigade under Col. Robert H. G. Minty and Col. John T. Wilder’s legendary “Lightning Brigade” of mounted infantry made stout stands at a pair of chokepoints crossing Chickamauga Creek. Minty’s small cavalry brigade held off nearly ten times its number by designing and implementing a textbook example of a delaying action. Their efforts thwarted Confederate Gen. Braxton Bragg’s entire battle plan by delaying his army’s advance for an entire day. The appendices of this book include two orders of battle, a discussion of the tactics employed by the Union mounted force, and an epilogue on how the War Department and National Park Service have remembered these events. Complete with more than 60 photos and 15 maps by master cartographer Mark Anderson Moore, Holding the Line on the River of Death is a valuable addition to the burgeoning Chickamauga historiography.

The Civil War is a fascinating time period in American history. Life in Civil War America, 2nd Edition provides readers with fast facts and statistics about the 1860s from military life to civilian life in both the North and South. Topics covered include: • social and economic realities of daily life • common slang and idioms • diets of the era, including recipes, food preparation and the impact of shortages and inflation on rations • civilian dress, military dress, and technology of the time. The book focuses on the era, not just the events of the war. Period illustrations and photos further illuminate the era.

This Civil War history and guide examines a major turning point in cavalry combat and includes a GPS guided tour of the battlefield. Just before dawn on June 9, 1863, Union soldiers materialized from a thick fog near the banks of Virginia's Rappahannock River to ambush sleeping Confederates. The ensuing struggle, which lasted throughout the day, was to be known as the Battle of Brandy Station—the largest cavalry battle ever fought on North American soil. These events marked a major turning point in the Civil War: the waning era of Confederate cavalry dominance in the East gave way to a confident and powerful Union mounted arm. Historian Eric J. Wittenberg meticulously captures the drama and significance of these events in this fascinating volume. The GPS guided tour of the battlefield is supplemented with illustrations and maps by master cartographer Steven Stanley.

"The argument of this book is that intelligence, or "competitive learning" is a measurable, buildable form of power that makes a predictable difference to outcomes in international politics. Employing skills in information engineering, its practitioners start with natural advantages and disadvantages in "knowing." This "terrain of uncertainty" is simply the distribution of advantageous knowledge, including innovation, education, science and the arts. Sound intelligence strategy entails mapping the terrain of uncertainty, and then employing intelligence systems, including platforms, sensors, communications, and analysis, to learn and decide more quickly and usefully than one's opponent does. An intelligence "opponent" is any competitor who threatens to defeat you by outwitting you, rendering you more ignorant, or deceiving you. Such a competitor may even be an ally whose intelligence is so flawed that he fails to understand that his best interests are coincident with your own. Intelligence power or "readiness" has four parts: the number, coherence, flexibility of collection systems; the capacity to deploy those systems against policy-irrelevant unknowns (the anticipation function, or finding black swans); the capacity to deploy them against policy-relevant ones (the "transmission" function that supports current strategy and operations); and the capacity for selective secrecy (the timely keeping and releasing of secrets). States maximizing these capacities will be better prepared for gaining decision-advantages than others, but whether this power is used correctly in any given moment depends on how the power is employed in service to decision-making. Of course, such is the case for all forms of power. Done well, intelligence has systemic effects because it contributes to the competitive unveiling of international politics-a form of transparency based less on good will than self-interest. Counterintelligence (CI), which uses the same instruments as positive intelligence but for the purpose of manipulating the learning of others (denial, influence or deception), may darken international politics from time to time, but it cannot in theory outpace competitive learning because it needs the latter in order to succeed. Counterintelligence cannot work-indeed creates dangerous vulnerabilities for the user-when the user's positive intelligence is weak. So, as all states compete to improve their intelligence capabilities, the capacity to achieve advantages through manipulation often lags behind, and over time will tend to decline"--

The four years of the Civil War saw bloodshed on a scale unprecedented in the history of the United States. Thousands of soldiers and sailors from both sides who survived the horrors of the war faced hardship for the rest of their lives as amputees. Now Guy R. Hasegawa presents the first volume to explore the wartime provisions made for amputees in need of artificial limbs—programs that, while they revealed stark differences between the resources and capabilities of the North and the South, were the forebears of modern government efforts to assist in the rehabilitation of wounded service members. Hasegawa draws upon numerous sources of archival information to offer a comprehensive look at the artificial limb industry as a whole, including accounts of the ingenious designs employed by manufacturers and the rapid advancement of medical technology during the Civil War; illustrations and photographs of period prosthetics; and in-depth examinations of the companies that manufactured limbs for soldiers and bid for contracts, including at least one still in existence today. An intriguing account of innovation, determination, humanitarianism, and the devastating toll of battle, Mending Broken Soldiers shares the never-before-told story of the artificial-limb industry of the Civil War and provides a fascinating glimpse into groundbreaking military health programs during the most tumultuous years in American history. Univeristy Press Books for Public and Secondary Schools 2013 edition