Kirjahaku

Ulysses S. Grant is dying of throat cancer. The Civil War general and former U.S. president was robbed by a business partner in a scheme which has plunged him from apparent wealth into heavy debt.Surrounded by family and friends, Grant attempts to write his memoirs in order to provide for his wife, Julia, who comforts him in his final days. His daughter Nellie, victim of a bad marriage, tries to heal the social wounds between an old friend, the Seneca Indian Ely Parker, and the Gilded Age world of Manhattan's elite. They and Grant's son Fred, Generals William Tecumseh Sherman and Frank Herron, the author and publisher Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain), and other family members and old comrades try to buttress Grant's strength, while reacting in various ways to the drama of his dying. Meanwhile, Grant's writing assistant, Adam Badeau, considers his own literary legacy and financial interests.The Last Circle of Ulysses Grant is a spellbinding tale of an American hero trying to win one last battle. Set in the turbulent last quarter of the 19th century, in bustling Manhattan, the Hudson Valley and the Adirondack mountains, the characters deal with issues of politics, race, the Civil War, Reconstruction, religion, love, family, betrayal, friendship, and the life and legacy of Grant himself. Based upon original source materials, the story is an accurate depiction of who and what filled the mind and last days of the man who saved the Union.

This is the first full-length biography of the Civil War general who saved the Union army from catastrophic defeat at the Battle of Chickamauga, and went on to play major roles in the Chattanooga and Mobile campaigns. Immediately after the war, as commander of U.S. troops in Texas, his actions sparked the "Juneteenth" celebrations of slavery's end, which continue to this day. Granger's first battle was at Wilson’s Creek, Missouri, and he soon thereafter rose through the ranks - cavalry, then infantry - in early 1863 vying with Forrest and Van Dorn for control of central Tennessee. The artillery platform he erected at Franklin, dubbed Fort Granger, would soon overlook the death knell of the main Confederate army in the west. Granger's first fame, however, came at Chickamauga, when the Rebel Army of Tennessee came within a hair’s-breadth of destroying the Union Army of the Cumberland. Without orders - even defying them - Granger marched his Reserve Corps to the scene of the hottest action, where Thomas was just barely holding on with the rump of Rosecrans' army. Bringing fresh ammunition and hurling his men against Longstreet’s oncoming legions, Granger provided just enough breathing space to prevent that Union defeat from becoming the worst open-field battle disgrace of the war. Granger was then given command of a full infantry corps, but just proved too odd a fellow to promote further. At Chattanooga he got on the nerves of U.S. Grant for going off to shoot cannon instead of commanding his troops (he’d actually indulged this impulse also at Chickamauga) and Sherman had no use for him either. So he went down to join Farragut in the conquest of Mobile, Alabama, leading land operations against the Confederate forts. This long-overdue biography sheds fascinating new light on a colourful commander who fought through the war in the West from its first major battles to its last, and even left his impact on the Reconstruction beyond.

James Montgomery was a leader of the free-state movement in pre-Civil War Kansas and Missouri, associated with its direct-action military wing. He then joined the Union Army and fought through most of the war. A close associate and ally of other abolitionists including John Brown, Harriet Tubman, Colonels Thomas Wentworth Higginson and Robert G. Shaw, Montgomery led his African-American regiment along with Tubman and other civilians in the 1863 Combahee River raid, which freed almost 800 slaves from South Carolina plantations. He then commanded a brigade in the siege of Fort Wagner, near Charleston. In 1864, still in brigade command, he fought at the Battle of Olustee in Florida, helping prevent the collapse and disintegration of Union General Truman Seymour's army. Later that year he returned home and played a significant role in defeating Confederate General Sterling Price's great raid, especially at the Battle of Westport. This is the first published biography of Montgomery, who was and remains a controversial figure. It uncovers and deals honestly with his serious flaws, while debunking some wilder charges, and also bringing to light his considerable attributes and achievements. Montgomery's life, from birth to death, is seen in the necessary perspective and clear delineation of the complex racial, political and military history of the Civil War era.

The Detective and Dorothy Day blends detective noir with historical fiction, set in eastern New York in 1975. The story follows Sy Johnson, a Manhattan private investigator hired by a labor union to probe the murder of upstate chemical tycoon Jack Williams. The accused killer is a local union president, but the deeper Sy digs, the murkier the case becomes. His investigation leads him to the Catholic Worker farm in Tivoli, where he meets seventy-seven-year-old Dorothy Day, the renowned writer, pacifist, and co-founder of the Catholic Worker movement. There he also encounters James, a black Vietnam veteran battling addiction, and his sister Roberta, a singer Sy met the night before. The murder case expands into a web of environmental pollution, labor unrest, high finance and corruption, complicated further by Sy's romantic entanglements and close brushes with death. From barrooms to a ballroom, and from Brooklyn's backstreets to quiet waters and woodland, Sy finds himself confronting not just killers, but his own conscience. As he unravels connections between five murders and a world poisoned by greed and guilt, his unlikely bond with Dorothy Day challenges him to seek justice and redemption in a new light. The Detective and Dorothy Day is both a gripping thriller and a meditation on morality in a world on the edge.