An Empire on the Edge: How Britain Came to Fight America

Nick Bunker (Get this book)
Bunker delivers an eye-opening study of the British view of the American Revolution and why they were crazy to fight it. England never had a solid plan for administering the American colonies, situated on a continent they couldn't understand and could never hope to rule. Their existence was purely economic, a market for English goods and an exclusive supplier of tobacco, rice, timber, fur, rum, sugar and other important exports. Those who governed for England sent few, if any, reports, and those were incomplete and/or about the coming trouble. A scholarly yet page-turning, superbly written history.--Kirkus

Lincoln's Gamble: The Tumultuous Six Months That Gave America the Emancipation Proclamation and Changed the Course of the Civil War

Todd Brewster (Get this book)
Brewster provides a highly readable, vigorously researched account of the fraught six-month period in which the Emancipation Proclamation came into being, which inarguably changed the course of the Civil War. Brewster opens with W.E.B. Du Bois' apercu, somewhat inaccurate but also somewhat on the mark, that Lincoln was an illegitimate, poorly educated Southerner whose championing of abolition was politically calculated. Whether accurate or not, Lincoln's decision brought added resolve to the battle to restore the Union, adding equality to "the American ideal of liberty." A sturdy, instructive, well-written book.--Kirkus

Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy: Four Women Undercover in the Civil War

Karen Abbott (Get this book)
In this gripping book, Abbott tells the moving and fascinating story of four women who played unconventional roles during the Civil War: Belle Boyd, a boisterous flirt and Confederate spy; Rose Greenhow, a seductive widow also spying for the South; Emma Edmondson, who disguised herself as a man and enlisted in the Union army; and Elizabeth Van Lew, a wealthy spinster in the Confederate capital with Unionist loyalties. Meticulously researched and fluidly written, this book draws the reader in and doesn't let go until the four heroines draw their final breaths. In the end, Abbott tells a remarkable story of passion, strength, and resilience.--Publisher's Weekly