Books like Shiloh, 1862 by Winston Groom

A Pulitzer‑winning historical novel that dramatizes the four‑day Battle of Gettysburg from the viewpoints of Union and Confederate leaders.

Cold Mountain follows wounded Confederate soldier Inman's perilous journey home to his love Ada, interweaving his odyssey through the war‑torn South with Ada’s struggle to revive her family farm, as both confront a nation and themselves in transition.

"Though the battle was crucial to the outcome of the American Civil War, the full story of Shiloh has never until now been told. Commonly considered a draw, Shiloh represented in fact a major reversal for the Confederacy -- a Confederacy that mounted at the outset one of the most incredible surprise attacks in American history and came within a hair's breadth of inflicting a major disaster upon the North. Yet circumstances common to war -- confusions, misjudgments, human frailities -- resulted in eventual defeat. Depending entirely upon original sources, Mr. Sword views this bitter conflict from both sides in a blow-by-blow, shot-by-shot account that is as dramatic as it is comprehensive and authoritative. Shiloh was a battle that took critical measure of two of America's most famous soldiers, Ulysses S. Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman. Furthermore, Shiloh saw the death (perhaps at the hands of his own men) of one of the highest-ranking American generals ever to die on the battlefield, Albert Sidney Johnston, C.S.A., and cost the lives of nearly 4,000 other Americans. Despite the decisive importance of the battle of Shiloh, it has until now remained a virtually undiscovered subject for study. The reasons are not hard to find. They are simply that the bitterness of the controversy that Shiloh engendered plus the complexity of the battle itself resulted in contradictory currents that obsured both the facts and their significance. But now Wiley Sword has put it right in a masterful reconstruction that is also an original and valuable contribution to American history"--Jacket.

The bloody and decisive two-day battle of Shiloh (April 6-7, 1862) changed the entire course of the American Civil War. The stunning Northern victory thrust Union commander Ulysses S. Grant into the national spotlight, claimed the life of Confederate commander Albert S. Johnston, and forever buried the notion that the Civil War would be a short conflict. The conflagration at Shiloh had its roots in the strong Union advance during the winter of 1861-1862 that resulted in the capture of Forts Henry and Donelson in Tennessee. The offensive collapsed General Albert S. Johnston’s advanced line in Kentucky and forced him to withdraw all the way to northern Mississippi. Anxious to attack the enemy, Johnston began concentrating Southern forces at Corinth, a major railroad center just below the Tennessee border. His bold plan called for his Army of the Mississippi to march north and destroy General Grant’s Army of the Tennessee before it could link up with another Union army on the way to join him. On the morning of April 6, Johnston boasted to his subordinates, “Tonight we will water our horses in the Tennessee!” They nearly did so. Johnston’s sweeping attack hit the unsuspecting Federal camps at Pittsburg Landing and routed the enemy from position after position as they fell back toward the Tennessee River. Johnston’s sudden death in the Peach Orchard, however, coupled with stubborn Federal resistance, widespread confusion, and Grant’s dogged determination to hold the field, saved the Union army from destruction. The arrival of General Don C. Buell’s reinforcements that night turned the tide of battle. The next day, Grant seized the initiative and attacked the Confederates, driving them from the field. Shiloh was one of the bloodiest battles of the entire war, with nearly 24,000 men killed, wounded, and missing. Edward Cunningham, a young Ph.D. candidate studying under the legendary T. Harry Williams at Louisiana State University, researched and wrote Shiloh and the Western Campaign of 1862 in 1966. Although it remained unpublished, many Shiloh experts and park rangers consider it to be the best overall examination of the battle ever written. Indeed, Shiloh historiography is just now catching up with Cunningham, who was decades ahead of modern scholarship. Western Civil War historians Gary D. Joiner and Timothy B. Smith have resurrected Cunningham’s beautifully written and deeply researched manuscript from its undeserved obscurity. Fully edited and richly annotated with updated citations and observations, original maps, and a complete order of battle and table of losses, Shiloh and the Western Campaign of 1862 will be welcomed by everyone who enjoys battle history at its finest.