Americans at War

by Ambrose, Stephen E.

• ISBN13: 9780425165102
• ISBN10: 0425165108
• Edition: Revised
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1998-10-01
• Publisher: Berkley Trade

Summary

Collected here for the first time are fifteen essays that span over 100 years of American history--and the remarkable thirty-year career of America's foremost historian. Ambrose's vivid and compelling essays take you to the heart of America's wars, from Grant's stunning Fourth of July victory at Vicksburg, to Nixon's surprise Christmas bombing of Hanoi. Ambrose brings to life the ambition and charisma that led to Custer's great success in the Civil War and fateful disaster at Little Big Horn. With vivid imagery and precise commentary, he puts you on the beaches of Normandy with the common footsoldier and in the headquarters of America's great commanders, Eisenhower, Patton and MacArthur. He takes you to the trenches of the homefront, ground zero of the Atomic Bomb, and into the arsenals of the twenty-first century.

Author Biography

Stephen E. Ambrose is Director Emeritus of the Eisenhower Center, retired Boyd Professor of History at the University of New Orleans, and president of the National D-Day Museum. He is the author of over twenty books including the bestsellers Undaunted Courage, Citizen Soldiers, and D-Day, multiple biographies of Dwight D. Eisenhower and Richard Nixon, and his compilation of 1,400 oral histories from American veterans.

Table of Contents

Introduction	ix
Struggle for Vicksburg: The Battles and Siege That Decided the Civil War	1	(58)
Custer's Civil War	59	(12)
``Just Dumb Luck'': American Entry into World War II	71	(14)
SIGINT: Deception and the Liberation of Western Europe	85	(10)
D-Day Revisited	95	(16)
Victory in Europe: May 1945	111	(14)
The Atomic Bomb and Its Consequences	125	(10)
General MacArthur: A Profile	135	(24)
A Fateful Friendship: Eisenhower and Patton	159	(16)
The War on the Home Front	175	(16)
My Lai: Atrocities in Historical Perspective	191	(12)
The Christmas Bombing	203	(18)
Eisenhower and NATO	221	(10)
The Cold War in Perspective	231	(14)
War in the Twenty-First Century	245