"More than 20,000 American Indians served in the Civil War, yet their stories have often been left out of the history books.
In Deadly Aim, Sally M. Walker explores the extraordinary lives of Michigan’s Anishinaabe sharpshooters. These brave soldiers served with honor and heroism in the line of duty, despite enduring broken treaties, loss of tribal lands, and racism.
Filled with fascinating and gripping firsthand accounts from the frontlines, this book teaches listeners about Company K, the elite band of sharpshooters, and Daniel Mwakewenah, the chief who killed more than thirty-two rebels in a single battle despite being gravely wounded.
Walker celebrates the lives of the soldiers whose stories have been left in the margins of history for too long with extensive research and consultation with the Repatriation Department for the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians, the Eyaawing Museum and Cultural Center, and the Ziibiwing Center of Anishinaabe Culture and Lifeways."
"The worst maritime disaster in American history wasn’t the Titanic. It was the steamboat Sultana on the Mississippi River—and it was completely preventable.In 1865, the Civil War was winding down and the country was reeling from Lincoln’s assassination. Thousands of Union soldiers, released from Confederate prisoner-of-war camps, were to be transported home on the steamboat Sultana. With a profit to be made, the captain rushed repairs to the ship so the soldiers wouldn’t find transportation elsewhere. More than 2,000 passengers boarded in Vicksburg, Mississippi...on a boat with a capacity of 376. The journey was violently interrupted when the ship’s boilers exploded, plunging the Sultana into mayhem; passengers were bombarded with red-hot iron fragments, burned by scalding steam, and flung overboard into the churning Mississippi. Although rescue efforts were launched, the survival rate was dismal—more than 1,500 lives were lost. In a compelling, exhaustively researched account, renowned author Sally M. Walker joins the ranks of historians who have been asking the same question for 150 years: who (or what) was responsible for the Sultana’s disastrous fate?"
"December 6, 1917, started like any other day in Halifax. But everything stopped shortly before nine o'clock that morning, when two ships collided in Halifax Harbour. One of the ships was loaded with munitions for the troops fighting in Europe; the other was preparing to collect medical supplies for the war's victims.
The resulting disaster was the largest man-made explosion until the detonation of the atomic bomb in 1945. The blast flattened large areas of Halifax and the town across the harbor, Dartmouth. It killed nearly two thousand people. As if that wasn't devastating enough, a blizzard hit the next day, dumping more than a foot of snow on the area and
slowing much-needed relief efforts.
This harrowing story of tragedy and recovery reveals the extraordinary strength and determination of a community in one of its darkest hours."
"BONUS FEATURE: Enhanced CD featuring photos, maps, and illustrations from the book.
For more than one hundred years, a submarine lay buried beneath the ocean floor near Charleston, South Carolina. This Civil War stealth weapon–the H. L. Hunley–made history in 1864 as the first submarine ever to sink an enemy ship. But something went wrong during that daring mission. The Hunley never returned to port.
Despite decades of searching, the Hunley remained unfound. In 1995 her story took a startling turn. As she had during the Civil War, the Hunley once again made newspaper headlines. How the submarine came to be on the ocean floor, how she came to leave it, and what happened next make up one of the most compelling stories in the history of archaeology and the history of the Civil War–an amazing tale of bravery, mystery, bones, and gold."
