By the summer of 1863, following Chancellorsville, it was clear to everyone on both sides of the Civil War that the Army of Northern Virginia was the most formidable force Americans had ever put in the field. It could only be ÒtiedÓ in battle, if against great odds, but would more usually vanquish its opponents. A huge measure of that armyÕs success was attributable to its cavalry arm, under Major General J.E.B. Stuart, which had literally Òrun ringsÓ around its enemies. But Northern arithmetic and expertise were gradually catching up. In this work, the sequel to his acclaimed Year of Glory, author Monte Akers tracks Stuart and his cavalry through the following year of the war, from Gettysburg to the Overland Campaign, concluding only when Jeb himself succumbs to a gunshot while fending off a force three times his size at the very gates of Richmond. Gettysburg put paid to the aura of unstoppable victory surrounding the Army of Northern Virginia. But when Grant and Sheridan came east they found that Lee, Stuart, Longstreet, and the rest still refused to be defeated. It was a year of grim casualties and ferocious fightingÑin short, a year of Òdesperate struggleÓ with the gloves off on both sides. This work picks up where Year of Glory left off, with a minute examination of StuartÕs cavalry during the controversial Gettysburg campaign, followed by the nine months of sparring during which the Army of Potomac declined to undertake further major thrusts against Virginia. But then the UnionÕs western chieftains arrived and the war became one huge Òfuneral procession,Ó as Grant and Sheridan found that their prior victories had by no means prepared them for meeting the Army of Northern Virginia. In this work Akers provides a fascinating, close-in view of the ConfederacyÕs cavalry arm during this crucial period of the war. After StuartÕs death the Army of Northern Virginia would eventually be cornered, but while he was alive it was often the Northerners who most needed to look to their security.

On September 17, 1862, the United States was on the brink, facing a permanent split into two separate nations. America's very future hung on the outcome of a single battle-and the result reverberates to this day. Given the deep divisions that still rive the nation; given what unites the country, too, Antietam is more relevant now than ever. The epic battle, fought near Sharpsburg, Maryland, was a Civil War turning point. The South had just launched its first invasion of the North; victory for Robert E. Lee would almost certainly have ended the war on Confederate terms. If the Union prevailed, Lincoln stood ready to issue the Emancipation Proclamation. He knew that freeing the slaves would lend renewed energy and lofty purpose to the North's war effort. Lincoln needed a victory to save the divided country, but victory would come at a price. Detailed here is the cannon-din and desperation, the horrors and heroes of this monumental battle, one that killed 3,650 soldiers, still the highest single-day toll in American history. Martin, an acclaimed writer of narrative nonfiction, renders this landmark event in a revealing new way. More than in previous accounts, Lincoln is laced deeply into the story. Antietam represents Lincoln at his finest, as the grief-racked president-struggling with the recent death of his son, Willie-summoned the guile necessary to manage his reluctant general, George McClellan. The Emancipation Proclamation would be the greatest gambit of the nation's most inspired leader. And, in fact, the battle's impact extended far beyond the field; brilliant and lasting innovations in medicine, photography, and communications were given crucial real-world tests. No mere gunfight, Antietam rippled through politics and society, transforming history. A Fierce Glory is a fresh and vibrant account of an event that had enduring consequences that still resonate today.

No commander during the Civil War is more closely identified with the "cavalier mystique" as Major General J.E.B. (Jeb) Stuart. And none played a more prominent role during the brief period when the hopes of the nascent Confederacy were at their apex, when it appeared as though the Army of Northern Virginia could not be restrained from establishing Southern nationhood. Jeb Stuart was not only successful in leading Robert E. Lee's cavalry in dozens of campaigns and raids, but for riding magnificent horses, dressing outlandishly, and participating in balls and parties that epitomized the "moonlight and magnolia" image of the Old South. Longstreet reported that at the height of the Battle of Second Manasses, Stuart rode off singing, "If you want to have good time, jine the cavalry . . ." Porter Alexander remembered him singing, in the midst of the miraculous victory at Chancellorsville, "Old Joe Hooker, won't you come out of the Wilderness?" Stuart was blessed with an unusually positive personality--always upbeat, charming, boisterous, and humorous, remembered as the only man who could make Stonewall Jackson laugh, reciting poetry when not engaged in battle, and yet never using alcohol or other stimulants. Year of Glory focuses on the twelve months in which Stuart's reputation was made, following his career on an almost day-to-day basis from June 1862, when Lee took command of the army, to June 1863, when Stuart turned north to regain a glory slightly tarnished at Brandy Station, but found Gettysburg instead. It is told through the eyes of the men who rode with him, as well as Jeb's letters, reports, and anecdotes handed down over 150 years. It was a year like no other, filled with exhilaration at the imminent creation of a new country. This was a period when it could hardly be imagined that the cause, and Stuart himself, could dissolve into grief, Jeb ultimately separated from the people he cherished most.

Set in Appalachian coal country, this “superb” (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette) legal drama follows one determined lawyer as he faces a coal industry giant in a seven-year battle over clean drinking water for a West Virginia community. For two decades, the water in the taps and wells of Mingo County didn’t look, smell, or taste right. Could the water be the root of the health problems—from kidney stones to cancer—in this Appalachian community? Environmental lawyer Kevin Thompson certainly thought so. For seven years, Thompson waged an epic legal battle against Massey Energy, West Virginia’s most powerful coal company, helmed by CEO Don Blankenship. While Massey’s lawyers worked out of a gray glass office tower in Charleston known as “the Death Star,” Thompson set up shop in a ramshackle hotel in the fading coal town of Williamson. Working with fellow lawyers and a crew of young activists, Thompson would eventually uncover the ruthless shortcuts that put the community’s drinking water at risk. Retired coal miners, women whose families had lived in the area’s coal camps for generations, a respected preacher and his brother, all put their trust in Thompson when they had nowhere else to turn. Desperate is a masterful work of investigative reporting about greed and denial, “both a case study in exploitation of the little guy and a playbook for confronting it” (Kirkus Reviews). Maher crafts a revealing portrait of a town besieged by hardship and heartbreak, and an inspiring account of one tenacious environmental lawyer’s mission to expose the truth and demand justice.

The never-before-told story of one of the most decorated units in the war in Afghanistan and its fifteen-month ordeal that culminated in the 2008 Battle of Wanat, the war's deadliest A single company of US paratroopers--calling themselves the "Chosen Few"--arrived in eastern Afghanistan in late 2007 hoping to win the hearts and minds of the remote mountain people and extend the Afghan government's reach into this wilderness. Instead, they spent the next fifteen months in a desperate struggle, living under almost continuous attack, forced into a slow and grinding withdrawal, and always outnumbered by Taliban fighters descending on them from all sides. Month after month, rocket-propelled grenades, rockets, and machine-gun fire poured down on the isolated and exposed paratroopers as America's focus and military resources shifted to Iraq. Just weeks before the paratroopers were to go home, they faced their last--and toughest--fight. Near the village of Wanat in Nuristan province, an estimated three hundred enemy fighters surrounded about fifty of the Chosen Few and others defending a partially finished combat base. Nine died and more than two dozen were wounded that day in July 2008, making it arguably the bloodiest battle of the war in Afghanistan. The Chosen Few would return home tempered by war. Two among them would receive the Medal of Honor. All of them would be forever changed.

The disturbing true crime story about what drove an abused New Hampshire wife to kill her violent husband, and the chaos that followed. Before domestic violence hot lines and safe houses were widespread, June Briand shot four bullets into her husband’s head in 1987 and was sentenced to fifteen years to life. This is the shocking true story of survival—and the intense bond June shared with her pathologically violent husband, a monster who physically and sexually tortured, degraded, and dominated her so relentlessly that she refused to believe he was dead even after she killed him. What kind of woman would slay her own husband? What kind of man would drive her to do it? Why didn’t she just leave him? Based on hundreds of hours interviewing June Briand, speaking with her lawyers, and poring over countless pages of court transcripts, police and hospital records, and interviews with virtually every key person involved with this case, the author explores those difficult questions while exposing the twisted dynamics of a relationship that enslaves a woman—and drives her to kill the beast she loved when she was finally out of hope, out of time, and out of her mind. “As gripping as The Burning Bed.”—John Saul, New York Times–bestselling author of Creature “A superbly written, riveting—often horrifying—story urgently needed for our time….A powerhouse page-turned about the limits of what a human being can endure.”—Susan Page, bestselling author

There once was ... a woman who loved her husband's cock so much that she began taking it to work in her lunchbox. a man who made films without a camera, which transfixed his estranged daughter. a couple who administered electric shocks to each other, to be reminded of what love is. a world where you wake up one day and notice that, one by one, people are turning blue Startling, wry, beguiling and emotionally charged - the stories in Modern Times might be reminiscent of Lydia Davis, Angela Carter and Daisy Johnson, but they are also unlike anything you've read before.