- Table View
- List View
Aberration of Mind: Suicide and Suffering in the Civil War–Era South
by Diane Miller SommervilleMore than 150 years after its end, we still struggle to understand the full extent of the human toll of the Civil War and the psychological crisis it created. In Aberration of Mind, Diane Miller Sommerville offers the first book-length treatment of suicide in the South during the Civil War era, giving us insight into both white and black communities, Confederate soldiers and their families, as well as the enslaved and newly freed. With a thorough examination of the dynamics of both racial and gendered dimensions of psychological distress, Sommerville reveals how the suffering experienced by Southerners living in a war zone generated trauma that, in extreme cases, led some Southerners to contemplate or act on suicidal thoughts. Sommerville recovers previously hidden stories of individuals exhibiting suicidal activity or aberrant psychological behavior she links to the war and its aftermath. This work adds crucial nuance to our understanding of how personal suffering shaped the way southerners viewed themselves in the Civil War era and underscores the full human costs of war.
Abigail
by Magda SzaboFrom the author of The Door, a beloved coming-of-age tale set in WWII-era Hungary.Abigail, the story of a headstrong teenager growing up during World War II, is the most beloved of Magda Szabó&’s books in her native Hungary. Gina is the only child of a general, a widower who has long been happy to spoil his bright and willful daughter. Gina is devastated when the general tells her that he must go away on a mission and that he will be sending her to boarding school in the country. She is even more aghast at the grim religious institution to which she soon finds herself consigned. She fights with her fellow students, she rebels against her teachers, finds herself completely ostracized, and runs away. Caught and brought back, there is nothing for Gina to do except entrust her fate to the legendary Abigail, as the classical statue of a woman with an urn that stands on the school&’s grounds has come to be called. If you&’re in trouble, it&’s said, leave a message with Abigail and help will be on the way. And for Gina, who is in much deeper trouble than she could possibly suspect, a life-changing adventure is only beginning.There is something of Jane Austen in this story of the deceptiveness of appearances; fans of J.K. Rowling are sure to enjoy Szabó&’s picture of irreverent students, eccentric teachers, and boarding-school life. Above all, however, Abigail is a thrilling tale of suspense.
“Able” To Adapt And Conquer (Eyewitness To Modern War #1)
by CSM Todd R. YergerDuring Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) VII and VIII, Able Troop 3-71 Cavalry operated as the brigade rapid mounted reaction force throughout Regional Command East (RC-E) and South in Afghanistan. This paper tells of how our unit moved in-between Regional Commands to deter and destroy the enemy, set up multiple Combat Out Posts (COP), trained Afghanistan National Police (ANP), dealt with the first extension and set the stages in the North for follow on forces.
The Ablest Navigator
by J. WandresThis action-packed biography focuses on a 1944 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy who was one of only fifty Jewish midshipmen commissioned in his class during World War II. In the Pacific, Lt. Shulman s destroyer survived both a typhoon and a Japanese kamikaze aircraft attack. After leaving the U.S. Navy and returning to civilian life, he volunteered to help the Haganah, the paramilitary force of the Jewish Agency for Palestine headed by David Ben-Gurion. Shulman had been introduced to Ben-Gurion by his mother, who was an executive with Hadassah, the Women's Zionist Organization of America. Working in New York City, he helped to buy surplus warships for the Haganah s clandestine sealift that brought Holocaust survivors from Europe to Palestine.In early 1948 Ben-Gurion called the 25-year-old Shulman to Israel to set up an academy to train officers and NCOs to man ships of Israel s fledgling navy, which at that point only had the refugee vessels. Beginning with almost no assets, within three months, now-Kvarnit (Commander) Shulman took the Israeli squadron into action against enemy ships, and even against one vessel fighting with Israeli forces. After Israel won its independence most of the 1,200 American and Canadian volunteers went home. Shulman, with his wife and infant son, remained in Israel, settling in Haifa, which would be their home for the next forty years. After Shulman died in 1994, a stained glass window was dedicated in his memory at the U.S. naval Academy s new Uriah P. Levy Chapel.Wandres book fully documents Shulman s role in helping to launch the navy of new Israeli nation. Based on interviews and correspondence with former U.S. Navy shipmates and Machal volunteers, Israeli and American archives, and declassified Secret U.S. Department of State documents, The Ablest Navigator provides a unique window into Israel s history and its relations with the United StatesThis narrative biography relies on interviews and correspondence with former U.S. Navy shipmates and Machal volunteers, Israeli and American archives, and declassified Secret U.S. Department of State documents.
Abner & Me
by Dan GutmanCannons are blasting! Bullets are flying! Wounded soldiers are everywhere! Stosh has time-traveled to 1863, right into the middle of the Civil War. In possibly his most exciting and definitely his most dangerous trip yet, Stosh has decided to answer the question for all time: did Abner Doubleday, a Civil War general, really invent the game of baseball? It's all here: big laughs, dramatic action, fast baseball games in the middle of a battlefield. You'll be blown away by this sixth amazing baseball card adventure!
The Abolitionist and the Spy: A Father, A Son, And Their Battle For The Union
by Ken LizzioAn abolitionist and a spy, father and son, in the forgotten Western theater of the Civil War The abolitionist legacies of Orville Brown and his son, Spencer, live on in this historic and daring 19th-century account. Journeying apart from each other, but with similar passion, Orville and Spencer’s stories span virtually every major abolitionist event: from the battles of Bleeding Kansas and the establishment of the free-soil movement to the river wars of Memphis, Vicksburg, and Shiloh. Readers will follow Orville west as he struck out for Kansas Territory to help ensure its entry as a free state. But the life of his precocious eldest son, Spencer, serves as an eventful accompaniment to Orville’s own adventures. As a young Navy recruit in the Civil War’s Western theater, Spencer volunteered to go behind enemy lines on numerous occasions. With his bold sleuthing and detailed diaries, Spencer’s life unfolds vividly against the exciting backdrop of the Union and Confederate battle for control of the Mississippi River. The lives of these daring men are a fortifying record of American perseverance.
The Abolitionists: A Collection of Their Writings
by Louis Ruchames"Forceful, inflammatory writings on slavery by many authors to present a comprehensive view of the Abolitionist movement, the most powerful force in the framing of the Northern anti-slavery attitude before the Civil War."-Print ed.
The Abongo Abroad: Military-Sponsored Travel in Ghana, the United States, and the World, 1959-1992 (Cold War in Global Perspective)
by John V. CluneBlending African social history with US foreign relations, John V. Clune documents how ordinary people experienced a major aspect of Cold War diplomacy. The book describes how military-sponsored international travel, especially military training abroad and United Nations peacekeeping deployments in the Sinai and Lebanon, altered Ghanaian service members and their families during the three decades after independence in 1957. Military assistance to Ghana included sponsoring training and education in the United States, and American policymakers imagined that national modernization would result from the personal relationships Ghanaian service members and their families would forge. As an act of faith, American military assistance policy with Ghana remained remarkably consistent despite little evidence that military education and training in the United States produced any measurable results.Merging newly discovered documents from Ghana's armed forces and declassified sources on American military assistance to Africa, this work argues that military-sponsored travel made individual Ghanaians' outlooks on the world more international, just as military assistance planners hoped they would, but the Ghanaian state struggled to turn that new identity into political or economic progress.
The Abongo Abroad: Military-Sponsored Travel in Ghana, the United States, and the World, 1959-1992 (Cold War in Global Perspective)
by John V. CluneBlending African social history with US foreign relations, John V. Clune documents how ordinary people experienced a major aspect of Cold War diplomacy. The book describes how military-sponsored international travel, especially military training abroad and United Nations peacekeeping deployments in the Sinai and Lebanon, altered Ghanaian service members and their families during the three decades after independence in 1957. Military assistance to Ghana included sponsoring training and education in the United States, and American policymakers imagined that national modernization would result from the personal relationships Ghanaian service members and their families would forge. As an act of faith, American military assistance policy with Ghana remained remarkably consistent despite little evidence that military education and training in the United States produced any measurable results. Merging newly discovered documents from Ghana's armed forces and declassified sources on American military assistance to Africa, this work argues that military-sponsored travel made individual Ghanaians' outlooks on the world more international, just as military assistance planners hoped they would, but the Ghanaian state struggled to turn that new identity into political or economic progress.
About Face: The Odyssey of an American Warrior
by Col. David H. HackworthCalled &“everything a war memoir could possibly be&” by The New York Times, this all-time classic of the military memoir genre now includes a new forward from bestselling author and retired Navy SEAL Jocko Willink.Whether he was fifteen years old or forty, David Hackworth devoted his life to the US Army and quickly became a living legend. However, he appeared on TV in 1971 to decry the doomed war effort in Vietnam. From Korea to Berlin and the Cuban missile crisis to Vietnam, Hackworth&’s story is that of an exemplary patriot, played against the backdrop of the changing fortunes of America and the US military. This memoir is the stunning indictment of the Pentagon&’s fundamental misunderstanding of the Vietnam conflict and of the bureaucracy of self-interest that fueled the war. With About Face, Hackworth has written what many Vietnam veterans have called the most important book of their generation and presents a vivid and powerful portrait of patriotism.
About Face: Military Resisters Turn Against War
by Buff Whitman-Bradley Sarah Lazare Cynthia Whitman-BradleyVeterans of recent conflicts describe their individual journeys from raw recruit to war resister in this collection of testimonials. Although it is not well publicized, the long tradition of refusing to fight unjust wars continues today within the American military. The stories in this book provide an intimate, honest look at the personal transformation of each of these young people and at the same time constitute a powerful argument against militarization and endless war. Also included are exclusive interviews with Noam Chomsky and Daniel Ellsberg addressing the U.S. wars in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan and the role civilian and GI resistance plays in bringing the troops home.
Above and Beyond: John F. Kennedy and America's Most Dangerous Cold War Spy Mission
by Casey Sherman Michael J. TougiasFrom the authors of the bestselling The Finest Hours comes the riveting, deeply human story of President John F. Kennedy and two U-2 pilots, Rudy Anderson and Chuck Maultsby, who risked their lives to save America during the Cuban Missile CrisisDuring the ominous two weeks of the Cold War's terrifying peak, two things saved humanity: the strategic wisdom of John F. Kennedy and the U-2 aerial spy program.On October 27, 1962, Kennedy, strained from back pain, sleeplessness, and days of impossible tension, was briefed about a missing spy plane. Its pilot, Chuck Maultsby, was on a surveillance mission over the North Pole, but had become disoriented and steered his plane into Soviet airspace. If detected, its presence there could be considered an act of war.As the president and his advisers wrestled with this information, more bad news came: another U-2 had gone missing, this one belonging to Rudy Anderson. His mission: to photograph missile sites over Cuba. For the president, any wrong move could turn the Cold War nuclear.Above and Beyond is the intimate, gripping account of the lives of these three war heroes, brought together on a day that changed history.
Above The French Lines; Letters Of Stuart Walcott, American Aviator.: July 4, 1917, to December 8, 1917 [Illustrated Edition]
by Stuart Walcott"It is now seven weeks since the dispatches from Paris reported that Stuart Walcott was attacked by three German airplanes and brought down behind the German lines, after he himself had brought down a German plane in his first combat on December 12, 1917, and that it was feared he had been killed; but even now, after the lapse of nearly two months, it is not definitely known whether his fall proved fatal, or whether the earnest hope of his friends that he is still alive may be realized."Unfortunately for the family and friends of Stuart Walcott, his grave was located not long after the Princeton Alumni Journal printed the above. He had given his life for his ideals of Democracy and Freedom fighting above the fields of France as a pilot. His letters recount his experiences training and fighting with the famed Lafayette Escadrille with fellow Americans.Author -- Walcott, Stuart, 1896-1917.Text taken, whole and complete, from the edition published in Princeton, Princeton university press; 1918. Original Page Count - 93 pagesIllustration -- 3 illustrations.
Above the Battle: An Air Observation Post Pilot at War
by Ronald Lyell MunroA rare memoir of serving as an AOP pilot—one of the most daring and dangerous jobs in World War II. Includes maps and photos. In April 1943, a young officer arrived at Penshurst to join C Flight, 653 Squadron. He was no ordinary pilot, and this was no ordinary RAF outfit. Lyell Munro was a soldier and 653 was an Air Observation Post Squadron whose pilots were Royal Artillery and whose ground crew were RAF. AOP pilots were expert gunners, skilled flyers, and incurable rule breakers. Flying from airstrips just behind the front lines, without armament and often with no parachute, they controlled the fire of hundreds of guns and their enemies learned to dread the sight of the little green Austers in the skies above the battlefield. An incautious movement, a puff of smoke or a chance flash of reflected sunlight could bring tons of high explosives raining down. They flew alone without ground control, scanning the skies constantly while they directed the guns. Closing at over 250mph, an attacking ME 109 left no time for indecision. Reactions had to be instinctive and evasive action instant. Failure was fatal. After the war ended, the survivors went back into civilian life and few histories mention them or what they did. Lyell&’s is one of only two personal accounts that are known to exist, and it is likely that there will be no more. Written for his family and his comrades in C Flight, Above the Battle is a story told without heroics, but with a deep affection for the men with whom he flew and worked.
Above the Battle (The World At War)
by Romain RollandAbove the Battle is an anti-world war I treatise by Romain Rolland written in 1916. (Excerpt) "A great nation assailed by war has not only its frontiers to protect: it must also protect its good sense. It must protect itself from the hallucinations, injustices, and follies which the plague lets loose. To each his part: to the armies the protection of the soil of their native land; to the thinkers the defence of its thought. If they subordinate that thought to the passions of their people they may well be useful instruments of passion; but they are in danger of betraying the spirit, which is not the least part of a people's patrimony. One day History will pass judgment on each of the nations at war; she will weigh their measure of errors, lies, and heinous follies. Let us try and make ours light before her!"
Above the Din of War: Afghans Speak About Their Lives, Their Country, and Their Future—and Why America Should Listen
by Peter EichstaedtMost books about the war in Afghanistan examine the conflict from the perspective of a foreign correspondent, political analyst, or US soldier, but Above the Din of War focuses on the people of Afghanistan themselves, providing a forum in which the thoughts of everyday people can be considered. Having traveled the country for a year, Peter Eichstaedt draws out Afghans from all walks of life: a former warlord, a Taliban judge, victims of self-immolation, courageous women parliamentarians, would-be suicide bombers, besieged merchants, frightened mullahs, and desperate archaeologists. The book explores a country that both vexes and fascinates the world and relates what its people have to say about living through 30 years of continual unrest, violence, and negative international attention. From his time spent interviewing and living with the people of Afghanistan, Eichstaedt proposes American and NATO exit strategies that could avoid leaving Afghanistan mired in chaos and war. This thought-provoking title from a journalist's point of view adds a human element to this complex international situation.
Above the East China Sea
by Sarah BirdIn her most ambitious, moving, and provocative novel to date, Sarah Bird makes a stunning departure. Above the East China Sea tells the entwined stories of two teenaged girls, an American and an Okinawan, whose lives are connected across seventy years by the shared experience of profound loss, the enduring strength of an ancient culture, and the redeeming power of family love. Luz James, a contemporary U.S. Air Force brat, lives with her strictly-by-the-rules sergeant mother at Kadena Air Base in Okianawa. Luz's older sister, her best friend and emotional center, has just been killed in the Afghan war. Unmoored by her sister's death and a lifetime of constant moving from base to base, Luz turns for the comfort her service-hardened mother cannot offer to the "Smokinawans," the "waste cases," who gather to get high every night in a deserted cove. When even pills, one-hitters, Cuervo Gold, and a growing crush on Jake Furusato aren't enough to soften the unbearable edge, the desolate girl contemplates taking her own life.In 1945, Tamiko Kokuba, along with two hundred of her classmates, is plucked out of her elite girls' high school and trained to work in the Imperial Army's horrific cave hospitals. With defeat certain, Tamiko finds herself squeezed between the occupying Japanese and the invading Americans. She believes she has lost her entire family, as well as the island paradise she so loved, and, like Luz, she aches with a desire to be reunited with her beloved sister. On an island where the spirits of the dead are part of life and your entire clan waits for you in the afterworld, suicide offers Tamiko the promise of peace. As Luz tracks down the story of her own Okinawan grandmother, she discovers that, if she surrenders to the most unbrat impulse and allows herself to connect completely with a place and its people, the ancestral spirits will save not only Tamiko but her as well. Propelled by a riveting narrative and set at the very epicenter of the headline-grabbing clash now emerging between the great powers, Above the East China Sea is at once a remarkable chronicle of how war shapes the lives of conquerors as well as the conquered and a deeply moving account of family, friendship, and love that transcends time.This eBook edition includes a Reading Group Guide.
Above the East China Sea
by Sarah BirdIn her most ambitious, moving, and provocative novel to date, Sarah Bird makes a stunning departure. Above the East China Sea tells the entwined stories of two teenaged girls, an American and an Okinawan, whose lives are connected across seventy years by the shared experience of profound loss, the enduring strength of an ancient culture, and the redeeming power of family love. Luz James, a contemporary U.S. Air Force brat, lives with her strictly-by-the-rules sergeant mother at Kadena Air Base in Okianawa. Luz's older sister, her best friend and emotional center, has just been killed in the Afghan war. Unmoored by her sister's death and a lifetime of constant moving from base to base, Luz turns for the comfort her service-hardened mother cannot offer to the "Smokinawans," the "waste cases," who gather to get high every night in a deserted cove. When even pills, one-hitters, Cuervo Gold, and a growing crush on Jake Furusato aren't enough to soften the unbearable edge, the desolate girl contemplates taking her own life.In 1945, Tamiko Kokuba, along with two hundred of her classmates, is plucked out of her elite girls' high school and trained to work in the Imperial Army's horrific cave hospitals. With defeat certain, Tamiko finds herself squeezed between the occupying Japanese and the invading Americans. She believes she has lost her entire family, as well as the island paradise she so loved, and, like Luz, she aches with a desire to be reunited with her beloved sister. On an island where the spirits of the dead are part of life and your entire clan waits for you in the afterworld, suicide offers Tamiko the promise of peace. As Luz tracks down the story of her own Okinawan grandmother, she discovers that, if she surrenders to the most unbrat impulse and allows herself to connect completely with a place and its people, the ancestral spirits will save not only Tamiko but her as well. Propelled by a riveting narrative and set at the very epicenter of the headline-grabbing clash now emerging between the great powers, Above the East China Sea is at once a remarkable chronicle of how war shapes the lives of conquerors as well as the conquered and a deeply moving account of family, friendship, and love that transcends time.From the Hardcover edition.
Above the East China Sea
by Sarah BirdIn her most ambitious, moving, and provocative novel to date, Sarah Bird makes a stunning departure. Above the East China Sea tells the entwined stories of two teenaged girls, an American and an Okinawan, whose lives are connected across seventy years by the shared experience of profound loss, the enduring strength of an ancient culture, and the redeeming power of family love. Luz James, a contemporary U.S. Air Force brat, lives with her strictly-by-the-rules sergeant mother at Kadena Air Base in Okianawa. Luz's older sister, her best friend and emotional center, has just been killed in the Afghan war. Unmoored by her sister's death and a lifetime of constant moving from base to base, Luz turns for the comfort her service-hardened mother cannot offer to the "Smokinawans," the "waste cases," who gather to get high every night in a deserted cove. When even pills, one-hitters, Cuervo Gold, and a growing crush on Jake Furusato aren't enough to soften the unbearable edge, the desolate girl contemplates taking her own life.In 1945, Tamiko Kokuba, along with two hundred of her classmates, is plucked out of her elite girls' high school and trained to work in the Imperial Army's horrific cave hospitals. With defeat certain, Tamiko finds herself squeezed between the occupying Japanese and the invading Americans. She believes she has lost her entire family, as well as the island paradise she so loved, and, like Luz, she aches with a desire to be reunited with her beloved sister. On an island where the spirits of the dead are part of life and your entire clan waits for you in the afterworld, suicide offers Tamiko the promise of peace. As Luz tracks down the story of her own Okinawan grandmother, she discovers that, if she surrenders to the most unbrat impulse and allows herself to connect completely with a place and its people, the ancestral spirits will save not only Tamiko but her as well. Propelled by a riveting narrative and set at the very epicenter of the headline-grabbing clash now emerging between the great powers, Above the East China Sea is at once a remarkable chronicle of how war shapes the lives of conquerors as well as the conquered and a deeply moving account of family, friendship, and love that transcends time.
Above the Pacific: Three Medal of Honor Fighter Aces of World War II Speak (American War Heroes)
by Colin HeatonThree legendary fighter pilots from the Pacific War—all recipients of the Medal of Honor—tell their own stories in this remarkable collection. Marine ace Pappy Boyington is perhaps the most celebrated of all American pilots in the war against Japan, fighting in the skies with both the famed Flying Tigers and his own Black Sheep Squadron. Marine Joe Foss joined Guadalcanal&’s Cactus Air Force and destroyed a Japanese Zero on his first mission—the first of twenty-six aerial kills achieved during the war. Navy captain David McCampbell didn&’t notch his first kill until June 1944, but he would quickly go on to assemble one of the most remarkable aerial-combat records in history with thirty-four victories, including nine in one day. In this gripping oral history—which spans the entire war— from the Americans who fought the Japanese in China to the final, desperate battle for Okinawa, these three heroes tell their own stories, in their own words. These interviews, personally conducted by military veteran and historian Colin Heaton, are the final testimony of some of America&’s greatest warriors.
Above the Reich: Deadly Dogfights, Blistering Bombing Raids, and Other War Stories from the Greatest American Air Heroes of World War II, in Their Own Words
by Anne-Marie Lewis Colin HeatonSensational eyewitness accounts from the most heroic and legendary American aviators of World War II, never before published as a bookThey are voices lost to time. Beginning in the late 1970s, five veteran airmen sat for private interviews. Decades after the guns fell silent, they recounted in vivid detail the most dangerous missions that made the difference in the war. Ed Haydon dueled with the deadliest of German aces--and forced him to the ground. Robert Johnson racked up twenty-seven kills in his P-47 Thunderbolt, but nearly lost his life when his plane was shot to ribbons and his guns jammed. Cigar-chomping Curtis LeMay was the Air Corps general who devised the bomber tactics that pummeled Germany's war machine. Robin Olds was a West Point football hero who became one of the most dogged, aggressive fighter pilots in the European theater, relentlessly pursuing Germans in his P-38 Lightning. And Jimmy Doolittle became the most celebrated American airman of the war--maybe even of all time--after he led the audacious raid to bomb Tokyo. Today these heroes are long gone, but now, in this incredible volume, they tell their stories in their own words.
Above the Trenches: The Short and Heroic Lives of the Young Aviators Who Fought and Died in the First World War
by Ian MackerseyThe 1914-18 conflict narrated through the voices of the men whose combat was in the air. <p><p> The empty chairs belonged, all too briefly, to the doomed young First World War airmen who failed to return from the terrifying daily aerial combats above the trenches of the Western Front. The edict of their commander in chief was the missing aviators were to be immediately replaced. Before the new faces could arrive, the departed men's vacant seats at the squadron dinner table were sometimes poignantly occupied by their caps and boots, placed there in a sad ritual by their surviving colleagues as they drank to their memory. <p><p> Life for most of the pilots of the Royal Flying Corps was appallingly short. If they graduated alive and unmaimed from the flying training that killed more than half of them before they reached the front line, only a few would for very long survive the daily battles they fought over the ravaged moonscape of no-man's-land. Their average life expectancy at the height of the war was measured only in weeks. Parachutes that began to save their German enemies were denied them. <p><p> Fear of incarceration, and the daily spectacle of watching close colleagues die in burning aircraft, took a devastating toll on the nerves of the world's first fighter pilots. Many became mentally ill. As they waited for death, or with luck the survivable wound that would send them back to 'Blighty', they poured their emotions into their diaries and streams of letters to their loved ones at home. <p><p> Drawing on these remarkable testimonies and pilots' memoirs, Ian Mackersey has brilliantly reconstructed the First Great Air War through the lives of its participants. As they waited to die, the men shared their loneliness, their fears, triumphs - and squadron gossip - with the families who lived in daily dread of the knock on the door that would bring the War Office telegram in its fateful green envelope.
Abraham Lincoln: Great Speeches
by Abraham LincolnPresents the full text of a selection of President Lincoln's greatest speeches, with historical notes and context provided by John Grafton.
Abraham Lincoln (Biographies)
by Laura K. MurrayHow much do you know about Abraham Lincoln? Find out the facts you need to know about the 16th president of the United States. You'll learn about the early life, challenges, and major accomplishments of this important American.
Abraham Lincoln and Coles County, Illinois
by Charles H. ColemanIn the predawn darkness of Friday, February 1, 1861, aboard a westbound train, Abraham Lincoln, left Coles County for the last time.Elected to the presidency the previous November and not yet having departed his home in Springfield for Washington, D.C., to be inaugurated, he had come on January 30 to visit his stepmother, Sarah Bush Lincoln, and to say farewell to friends and family in Charleston and the surrounding area.He would never return. Having led the United States through the Civil War, he would die at the hand of assassin John Wilkes Booth in Washington’s Ford Theater on another Friday—April 14, 1865.This book by history scholar Charles H. Coleman explores Lincoln’s close-knit family ties in and connection to Coles County, located in east-central Illinois: the home of his father and stepmother, Thomas and Sarah Bush Lincoln, as well as his stepbrother John and his stepsisters, Sarah Elizabeth and Matilda, along with their families, and where Lincoln himself was a frequent visitor during his lifetime.