Never Call Retreat

Download or read book Never Call Retreat written by Newt Gingrich and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2010-04-01 with total page 810 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New York Times bestselling authors Newt Gingrich and William R. Forstchen conclude their inventive trilogy with Never Call Retreat, a remarkable answer to the great "what if" of the American Civil War: Could the South have indeed won? After his great victories at Gettysburg and Union Mills, General Robert E. Lee's attempt to bring the war to a final conclusion by attacking Washington, D.C., fails. However, in securing Washington, the remnants of the valiant Union Army of the Potomac, under the command of the impetuous General Dan Sickles, is trapped and destroyed. For Lincoln there is only one hope left: that General Ulysses S. Grant can save the Union cause. It is now August 22, 1863. Lincoln and Grant are facing a collapse of political will to continue the fight to preserve the Union. Lee, desperately short of manpower, must conserve his remaining strength while maneuvering for the killing blow that will take Grant's army out of the fight and, at last, bring a final and complete victory for the South. Pursuing the remnants of the defeated Army of the Potomac up to the banks of the Susquehanna, Lee is caught off balance when news arrives that General Ulysses S. Grant, in command of more than seventy thousand men, has crossed that same river, a hundred miles to the northwest at Harrisburg. As General Grant brings his Army of the Susquehanna into Maryland, Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia maneuvers for position. Grant first sends General George Armstrong Custer on a mad dash to block Lee's path toward Frederick and with it control of the crucial B&O railroad, which moves troops and supplies. The two armies finally collide in Central Maryland, and a bloody week-long battle ensues along the banks of Monocacy Creek. This must be the "final" battle for both sides. In Never Call Retreat, Newt Gingrich and William R. Forstchen bring all of their critically acclaimed talents to bear in what is destined to become an immediate classic.

Download or read book Grant Comes East written by Newt Gingrich and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2010-04-01 with total page 673 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Grant Comes East, the second book in the bestselling series by Newt Gingrich and William R. Forstchen, continues the story of a Confederate victory at Gettysburg. Across 140 years, nearly all historians have agreed that after the defeat of the Army of the Potomac at Gettysburg, the taking of Washington, DC, would end the war. But was it possible? Lee knows that a frontal assault against such fortifications could devastate his army, but it is a price he fears must be paid for final victory. Beyond a military victory in the field, Lee must also overcome the defiant stand of President Abraham Lincoln, who vows that regardless of the defeat at Gettysburg, his solemn pledge to preserve the Union will be honored. Lincoln will mobilize the garrison of Washington to hold on no matter what the costs. At the same time, Lincoln has appointed General Ulysses S. Grant as commander of all Union forces. Grant, fresh from his triumph at Vicksburg, races east, bringing with him his hardened veterans from Mississippi to confront Lee. What ensues across the next six weeks is a titanic struggle as the surviving Union forces inside the fortifications of Washington fight to hang on, while Grant prepares his counterblow. The defeated Army of the Potomac, staggered by the debacle dealt at Gettysburg, is not yet completely out of the fight, and is slowly reorganizing. Its rogue commander, General Dan Sickles, is thirsting for revenge against Lee, the restoration of the honor of his army, and the fulfillment of his own ambitions, which reach all the way to the White House. All these factors will come together in a climatic struggle spanning the ground from Washington, through Baltimore, to the banks of the Susquehanna River. Once again, Newt Gingrich and William R. Forstchen create a brilliant story of how the Civil War could have unfolded. In Grant Comes East, they use their years of research and expertise to take readers on an incredible journey.

Download or read book The Coming Fury written by Bruce Catton and published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson. This book was released on 2001 with total page 566 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chronicles the history of the American Civil War, starting with the Democratic Party's Charleston Convention in 1860, and ending with first battle of the war at Bull Run.

Download or read book Terrible Swift Sword written by Bruce Catton and published by Doubleday. This book was released on 2013-07-24 with total page 639 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The second episode in this award-winning trilogy impressively shows how the Union and Confederacy, slowly and inexorably, reconciled themselves to an all-out war—an epic struggle for freedom. In Terrible Swift Sword, Bruce Catton tells the story of the Civil War as never before—of two turning points which changed the scope and meaning of the war. First, he describes how the war slowly but steadily got out of control. This would not be the neat, short, “limited” war both sides had envisioned. And then the author reveals how the sweeping force of all-out conflict changed the war’s purpose, in turning it into a war for human freedom. It was not initially a war against slavery. Instead, this was, Mr. Lincoln kept insisting, a fight to reunite the United States. At first, it was not even much of a fight. Cautious generals; inexperienced, incompetent, or jealous administrators; shortages of good people and supplies; excess of both gloom and optimism, kept each side from swinging into decisive action. As the buildup began, there were maddening delays. The earliest engagements were halting and inconclusive. After these first tests at arms, reputations began to crumble. Buell, Halleck, Beauregard Albert Sidney Johnston. Failed to drive ahead—for reasons good and bad. General McClellan (impaled in these pages on the arrogant words of his letters) captured more imaginations than enemies, and continued to accept serious over estimates of Confederate strength while becoming more and more fatally estranged from his own government.

Download or read book America in Retreat written by Bret Stephens and published by Sentinel. This book was released on 2015-10-27 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Americans are weary of acting as the world's policeman, especially in the face of our unending economic troubles at home. President Obama stands for cutting defense budgets, leaving Afghanistan, abandoning Iraq, appeasing Russia, and offering premature declarations of victory over al Qaeda. Meanwhile, some Republicans now also argue for a far smaller and less expensive American footprint abroad. Pulitzer Prize-winning Wall Street Journal columnist Bret Stephens rejects this view. As he sees it, retreating from our global responsibilities will ultimately exact a devastating price to our security and prosperity. In the 1930s, it was the weakness and vacillation of the democracies that led to war and genocide. Today the regimes in Tehran, Damascus, Beijing, and Moscow continue to test America's will. Americans have often been tempted to turn our backs on a world that fails to live up to our idealism and doesn't easily bend. But succumbing to that temptation always leads to tragedy. The mantle of global leadership is a responsibility we must shoulder for the sake of our freedom, our prosperity, and our safety"--

Download or read book Gettysburg written by Newt Gingrich and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2010-04-01 with total page 530 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An action-packed and painstakingly researched masterwork by Newt Gingrich and William R. Forstchen, Gettysburg stands as the first book in a series to tell the story of how history could have unfolded, how a victory for Lee would have changed the destiny of the nation forever. This is a novel of true heroism and glory in America's most trying hour. The Civil War is the American Iliad. Lincoln, Stonewall Jackson, Grant, and Lee still stand as heroic ideals, as stirring to our national memory as were the legendary Achilles and Hector to the world of the ancient Greeks. Within the story of our Iliad one battle stands forth above all others: Gettysburg. Millions visit Gettysburg each year to walk the fields and hills where Joshua Chamberlain made his legendary stand and Pickett went down to a defeat which doomed a nation, but in defeat forever became a symbol of the heroic Lost Cause. As the years passed, and the scars healed, the debate, rather than drifting away has intensified. It is the battle which has become the great "what if," of American history and the center of a dreamscape where Confederate banners finally do crown the heights above the town. The year is 1863, and General Robert E. Lee and his Army of Northern Virginia are poised to attack the North and claim the victory that would end the brutal conflict. But Lee's Gettysburg campaign ended in failure, ultimately deciding the outcome of the war. Launching his men into a vast sweeping operation, of which the town of Gettysburg is but one small part of the plan, General Lee, acting as he did at Chancellorsville, Second Manassas, and Antietam, displays the audacity of old. He knows he has but one more good chance to gain ultimate victory, for after two years of war the relentless power of an industrialized north is wearing the South down. Lee's lieutenants and the men in the ranks, imbued with this renewed spirit of the offensive embark on the Gettysburg Campaign that many dream "should have been." The soldiers in the line, Yank and Reb, knew as well that this would be the great challenge, the decisive moment that would decided whether a nation would die, or be created, and both sides were ready, willing to lay down their lives for their Cause.

Download or read book A Long Retreat written by Andrew Krivak and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2015-05-12 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This gorgeously written memoir, A Long Retreat, tells the story of one man's search for his religious calling-a search that led him to the Dominican Republic and Central Europe, to Moscow and the South Bronx, and finally into married life with a woman whose search for God coincided with his own. In 1990 Andrew Krivak-poet, yacht rigger, ocean lifeguard, student of the classics-entered the Society of Jesus. The heart of Jesuit training is the Long Retreat, thirty days of silence and prayer in which the Jesuit novice reflects on the Gospels and tests his desire for the priesthood. For Krivak, eight years of Jesuit formation turned out to be a long retreat in its own right, as he tested all his desires-for poetry, for travel, for independence, for love-against the pledge to do all "for the greater glory of God." And in this deeply affecting book the long retreat becomes a pattern for our own spiritual lives, enabling us to embrace our desire for solitude and perspective in our own circumstances, the way Krivak has in his new life as a husband, father, and writer. The search for God is finally the search for oneself, St. Augustine wrote. Krivak's story pushes past the awful stories of scandal in the Catholic Church to reveal why a modern, forward-looking man would yearn to be a priest. Unlike those stories, it has an happy ending-one in which we can recognize ourselves.