the Whirlwind of War: Voices Storm, 1861-1865

The Whirlwind of War builds on the great themes and follows many of the important figures who were introduced in The Approaching Fury. Stephen B. Oates's riveting narrative brings to life the complex and destructive war that is the central event in American history. He writes in the first person, assuming the viewpoints of several of the principal figures: the rival presidents, Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis; the rival generals, Robert E. Lee, Ulysses S. Grant, and William Tecumseh Sherman; the great black abolitionist, editor, and orator, Frederick Douglass; the young Union battlefield nurse, Cornelia Hancock; the brilliant head of the Chicago Sanitary Commission and cocreator of the northern Sanitary Fair, Mary Livermore; the Confederate socialite and political insider, Mary Boykin Chesnut; the assassin, John Wilkes Booth; and the greatest poet of the era, Walt Whitman, who speaks in the coda about the meaning of war and Lincoln's death. Stephen B. Oates is professor emeritus of history at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and the author of sixteen books, including With Malice Toward None: A Life of Abraham Lincoln, winner of the Christopher Award; Let the Trumpet Sound: A Life of Martin Luther King, Jr., winner of the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Book Award; and The Whirlwind of War: Voices of the Storm, 1861-1865, available in a Bison Books edition.