Edward Achorn

A brilliantly conceived and vividly drawn story--Washington, D.C. on the eve of Abraham Lincoln's historic second inaugural address as the lens through which to understand all the complexities of the Civil War By March 4, 1865, the Civil War had slaughtered more than 700,000 Americans and left intractable wounds on the nation. After a morning of rain-drenched fury, tens of thousands crowded Washington's Capitol grounds that day to see Abraham Lincoln take the oath for a second term. As the sun emerged, Lincoln rose to give perhaps the greatest inaugural address in American history, stunning the nation by arguing, in a brief 701 words, that both sides had been wrong, and that the war's unimaginable horrors--every drop of blood spilled--might well have been God's just verdict on the national sin of slavery. Edward Achorn reveals the nation's capital on that momentous day--with its mud, sewage, and saloons, its prostitutes, spies, reporters, social-climbing spouses and power-hungry politicians--as a microcosm of all the opposing forces that had driven the country apart. A host of characters, unknown and famous, had converged on Washington--from grievously wounded Union colonel Selden Connor in a Washington hospital and the embarrassingly drunk new vice president, Andrew Johnson, to poet-journalist Walt Whitman; from soldiers' advocate Clara Barton and African American leader and Lincoln critic-turned-admirer Frederick Douglass (who called the speech "a sacred effort") to conflicted actor John Wilkes Booth--all swirling around the complex figure of Lincoln. In indelible scenes, Achorn vividly captures the frenzy in the nation's capital at this crucial moment in America's history and the tension-filled hope and despair afflicting the country as a whole, soon to be heightened by Lincoln's assassination. His story offers new understanding of our great national crisis and echoes down the decades to resonate in our own time.

The Momentous Second Inauguration of Abraham Lincoln

Every Drop of Blood

A journalist and Pulitzer Prize finalist describes how a German-born biergarten owner who knew nothing about baseball bought the St. Louis Browns baseball team in an effort to sell more beer and unwittingly formed the American League and revitalized the sport.

How Brewers, Barkeeps, Rowdies, Immigrants, and a Wild Pennant Fight Made Baseball America S Game

The Summer of Beer and Whiskey

“All fans of baseball, all fans of a good story, will love this book." — Professor Gordon Wood, Pulitzer and Bancroft Prize winner “This is a beautifully written, meticulously researched story about a bygone baseball era that even die-hard fans will find foreign, and about a pitcher who might have been the greatest of all time.” — Joseph J. Ellis, Pulitzer prize-winning historian Following in the tradition of the sleeper bestseller Crazy ‘08, Fifty-Nine in '84 is the story of Charles Radbourn, a brilliant major league baseball pitcher who, in the 1884 season, won an astonishing 59 games, a record that has never been broken. Set against the backdrop of 19th century baseball, Fifty-Nine in '84 gives readers a glimpse of the dangerous and violent game that preceded the sport we enjoy today.

Edward Achorn

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